


It Ends Bad

by deluxemycroft



Series: Ouroboros [1]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: (kind of), Abuse, Abusive family dynamics, Alien Culture, Alternate Universe, Cultural Differences, Dark Thor (Marvel), Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Gen, King Thor (Marvel), M/M, Non-Sexual Submission, Overly Familiar Familial Relationships, Possessive Behavior, Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), Protective Thor (Marvel), Rewriting Canon, Time Travel, Whump, infinity war fix-it, soul bonds
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-01
Updated: 2019-01-11
Packaged: 2019-09-04 22:08:56
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 9
Words: 47,699
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16798000
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deluxemycroft/pseuds/deluxemycroft
Summary: Thanos takes.Thor takes back.





	1. CH1

**Author's Note:**

> so this....uh....this started out as something a lot different than what it ended up. this first part is completely finished, i can't polish it up any more. so this is what you get. if i missed anything, please let me know.
> 
> it turned into a completely different beast than what i had outlined, but i figure that's how most things work. i'm not really going to warn for anything but take heed of the warnings, i guess. my only real goal is that i've done my plot idea justice, and kept true enough to the characters. well, as true as i can, in regards to what i turned them into. 
> 
> good luck, and i guess i should apologize preemptively.

“You give up this poisonous dream! You come _home_.”

There was a hand on his neck, and familiar, desperate blue eyes in front of him.

Confused, he looked around—the last he could remember was attempting to take one last desperate breath as Thanos’s hand closed ever tighter around his neck—and dropped the Scepter from his hand.

Thor grabbed it and yelled for Heimdall. In the chaos of Stark and Captain America fighting at the bottom of the mountain, the Bifrost took them away. Wait, how had it been rebuilt already? Wasn’t it broken at whatever point in time this was? 

For someone usually so quick on his feet, Loki was dumbfounded. He allowed Thor to drag him before Odin, and he spat out his grievances, telling of the choice he had been given: the Void, or the Tesseract. He knelt next to his brother and told of how the Other had split his body open until he was no longer Asgardian, until he was no more than a monster willing to do it’s masters bidding, and then unleashed upon Midgard. 

The words were not his own.

Yes, the Other had done horrible things to him, and he had lived through terrible, terrible things, but he never would have admitted that, not the vindictive, spiteful beast he had been when he fell into the Void. Whatever body this was, it did not remember the betrayal at finding out his entire life had been a lie. 

Thor dragged him from the throne room as Odin decided his fate, and Loki looked around the antechamber he had been left in. He still felt muddled, his mind racing to connect what should be happening and what was. He could remember stabbing Thor as well as he could remember giving in. He remembered the Beast.

He remembered Thanos.

He could never forget.

Thor came back into the room a few minutes later and went down on one knee next to Loki. “Brother...I thought you dead.”

“I would have preferred it,” Loki told him, and leaned into the hand his brother put on his shoulder. 

Who was this person inhabiting his skin? Who was the Loki that believed his brother’s words, that trusted him? He could remember so much, and all of it had already happened but still would not happen. He remembered Thor telling him that he could be _more_ , that after all these years, Thor still thinking he could be anything other than what he was. 

He remembered swearing undying fidelity, conjuring a dagger at the same time. 

Thor helped him back into the throne room while Loki thought about it.

Could his seidr somehow have twisted the magic of his oath up and brought him back? He was very powerful but not nearly powerful enough for something such as that. His seidr was tricks and manipulation, not resurrection.

No death, no more torture, only five human years of imprisonment in Asgard’s dungeons. Thor escorted him down and helped Loki out of his clothes.

A piece of Midgardian paper fluttered out from one of the pockets and floated underneath the small bed. It had seidr on it that Loki had seen and felt before, not in this life but in the one he would not live. Thor had servants bring down various books and linens and Loki’s favorite clothes and then wished his brother a good night.

Alone, inside the same prison he had been in before, and for far less crimes than he had committed before, Loki picked up the small piece of paper and smoothed his fingers over it.

It was Thor’s handwriting, as blocky and boring as it always was, but for some reason, it brought a tear to Loki’s eye. 

_Not a second chance. The only way you could be brought back._

_I will see you as soon as I am able._

_You bring me joy._

_King Thor_

Loki pressed the letter to his arm and sunk the text into his skin, watching the blank paper slide away as the text flared green and then faded away. He could press his fingers to that spot on his arm and Thor’s words would be brought up, a practice he had done with a few other notes he had been left by his brother and his mother.

He sat on the bed in his cage and wondered—had Thor been able to stop Thanos? Had he gone to Nidavellir? Had Thanos retrieved the remaining Infinity Stones? He knew that if Thor had died in his place, it would not have mattered what else Thanos had accomplished, Loki would have brought Thor back in any time or place possible. He was not someone equipped to live without his brother.

That must have been what Thor had done, the Thor that Loki remembered, the Thor he had wanted ever since he was young, the Thor that was everything Loki knew he could be. A King. Loki had not lied all those years ago when he had told Thor that one day he would be king, and Loki would be standing beside him. The King that Loki had gone on his knees for, and had pledged his allegiance toward, a King that upheld every dream Loki had ever had for his brother.

Time passed slowly, and uncomfortably. His life was well enough, given that Thor regularly brought him new books and his clothes and linens were washed frequently, but Thor refused to give him information on what was happening in the world outside his cell. Loki did not know if it was a choice Thor made on his own or a decision handed down by Odin, and after a year or so, he had more important things to care about.

By the time Loki had been dragged before him, Thanos only had the Mind Stone, which he had given to Loki inside the Scepter. His memory of the life he had already lived but had not lived was fading quickly. But now Asgard or Midgard had the Tesseract and the Scepter, which meant they were out of Thanos’s hands, for the time being.

The Mad Titan and his Children were already destroying as much as they could get their hands on, and Loki had barely escaped his grasp. But that had been enough time that he had to assume Thanos already had at least one Infinity Stone, especially since Loki had lost him the two already. Perhaps it was a good thing he was here; Thanos could not reach him in the Asgardian dungeons, no matter how long his grasp was.

It was becoming more and more difficult to remember the life he had already lived, and he began writing down as much as he could. Journaling his thoughts was a habit he had since he was young, and it was a comfortable place to return to when his life was a prison.Thor was interested in his writings and Loki reluctantly let him read the most innocuous pieces; Loki masquerading as Odin, Thor and the Beast fighting on Sakaar, Thor telling Loki he would kill him himself if Loki betrayed him. 

The Thor that had lived through those things was different than the quiet, almost thoughtful God of Thunder that appeared before Loki now. It felt as if a trick. Watching Loki fall into the Void and then return to attempt to take over Midgard had changed his brother, but getting Loki back had changed him even more. He was still hot-headed and impulsive, but sometimes Loki saw him think through his actions, and didn’t have his head quite so far up his own ass.

The days ran together, interspersed with regular meals and Loki greedily reading every book he could get his hands on. Thor refused to bring him any books mentioning the first time Thanos had been defeated, or any mentioning the Infinity Stones, but he could be bent enough to bring books about magical items from other realms. Not many of the books were things that Loki had not already read, but it was better than nothing, better than his brain going to rot.

Frigga came to visit once per moon cycle. They had allowed him a small spell that showed him the passage of time, and he could not decide if it was more of a torture to know or not.

His wonderful, kind, beautiful mother. The only person who had ever seen him for who he was and accepted him for it, and loved him all the more for his faults.

She knew there was something Loki had lived through that he could not put a name to, and she only brought it up a few times.

He could not bring himself to tell her of her death. He remembered being in a cell similar to the one he now occupied, and screaming and thrashing and ripping his skin with his nails and pulling his hair and promising to tear apart the monsters that had taken his mother from him. The only person in any realm that had ever understood him, dead. It had felt as if it was by his own hand.

He allowed her to read some of the recountings of his future memories, and he knelt in front of her as she brushed his hair.

They spoke of seidr, as they had done when he was younger.

Time passed, whether he wanted it to or not.

Odin never visited. Loki refused to let himself think about it, and continued to try to play pranks on his guards. 

One morning, Loki woke up and Thor was standing outside his cell. It took him a few minutes to realize the shielding that had kept him trapped was no longer active, and Loki slowly stepped through, into his brother’s arms.

“Has it been five years?”

“Almost four, but Odin decided to let you out early.”

He stayed his tongue from saying it was the first time in their long lives that Odin had showed him any manner of leniency, and instead followed his brother out of the dungeons.

Odin and Frigga greeted him, and Loki forced himself to stand in place when Odin rested a hand on his shoulder.

“There will be a feast tonight, in honor of my son’s return!” Odin announced, as if Loki had returned from a glorious battle, but he only nodded and inclined his head in thanks. He pressed a kiss to his mother’s hand and followed Thor to their rooms.

“You still have not taken your own wing?” Loki asked, watching the servants bring up his belongings from his cell, looking around his rooms as if seeing an old friend. They had separate bedrooms and bathrooms, but shared a common space and sitting area. Their bedrooms were connected with a passage behind two bookcases, one they often left open when they were younger. 

“I could not make myself move away from you,” Thor told him, resting Mjolnir on the table he kept for it near his bed. 

“Odin is throwing a feast in my honor tonight,” Loki said instead of a reply, only wanting the sanctuary of his own bed, but Thor stayed him.

“It is to appease you before he tells you why you have been released early.” Thor hung up his cloak and waved Loki over for him to help unbuckle his tunic.

Rolling his eyes, Loki complied, quick fingers making quick work of the buckles. It was as he had never left, never been imprisoned.

The fire of injustice he expected never rose up in his gut. How very strange.

“The time passed quickly, one more year would not have been too much to suffer.” He went to his knees to unbuckle Thor’s greaves.

“You will return to Midgard with me.”

Loki choked on air, allowing Thor to yank him to his feet.

“Back to Midgard? They’ll kill me!”

Thor only frowned at him. “Within good reason, brother, given that you attempted to invade them. But no, you are being tasked to help the Avengers. They are the greatest defense we have found to defeating Thanos. I do not know what changed your mind on destroying Midgard, but I believe it has something to do with those strange writings of yours. And I believe you have knowledge of Thanos, more than what you have told us of your time being tortured by the Other. And the Avengers have agreed to work with you.”

“I haven’t agreed to work with them,” Loki shot back, and ducked the hand Thor brought up to cuff him in the back of the head. 

“There is no agreement. There is either the cell or helping Midgard. I am headed there soon, with or without you.” 

Loki had not spoken to another person besides a few servants, his mother, and Thor, in years. Although, he had done that for decades in his younger years, so it would not be too different now.

Freedom, however, now that would take getting used to.

Thor could tell what he was thinking, and stopped Loki in his tracks. “I already made an agreement with the Avengers. Either you will be with me, or with their witch. He is very powerful.”

A Midgardian witch? How very interesting.

Loki turned back to his brother with a smile.


	2. CH2

The feast was overwhelming, as they always were, and Thor did his usual duty of acting as the buffer between the citizens of Asgard and Loki. Generally it was for their safety, as Loki was fond of putting curses or playing tricks on them once he grew bored. Feasts were generally very boring, unless delegates from other realms were there, especially when those delegates and ambassadors did not know of Loki’s tricks. 

But tonight, Loki sat next to his brother and took his first drink of mead in four years. Thor smiled at him and motioned for him to drink up, and then Thor pushed to his feet and raised his glass to the people surrounding them.

“To my brother! He is home!”

The cheer was deafening. 

Loki could not wipe the smug smile off his face, nor did he particularly want to. 

The food was good, the company better. He had missed this.

Loki pushed to his feet and spread his arms out from his sides. “I have returned!”

Thor wrapped his arm around Loki’s shoulders and pulled him close, raising his glass and cheering along with their people. Even Frigga clapped along and Odin gave Loki a small, insincere smile.

Good to be home.

* * *

The next morning, Thor dragged him out of bed and threw him into the bath. Loki came up gasping and spitting like a cat, and threw shocks of seidr at his laughing brother. He languished in the too-warm bath—Thor had remembered how he preferred it—and then quickly washed himself, running his fingers through his long hair. It was far past his shoulders now, nearly to the middle of his back.

He wondered why Odin had not cut it when he had been imprisoned.

Getting out of the bath, Loki ran a towel over himself and luxuriated in the feeling. Frigga had run a cleansing spell over him during her visits, and he had attempted to wash himself with the hand basin of cold water and a cloth that had been provided to him, but he had refused to bare himself completely to the guards that watched his every move.

Prisoner or not, he was still a prince. Odin had not taken that from him.

A few minutes later, Thor poked his head in, and motioned to the brush on the counter. Loki nodded and took his place in front of Thor as he sat in the small vanity chair Loki had in front of the mirror.

They sat in comfortable silence as Thor brushed his hair.

“You have not let me do this for many years, brother,” Thor said, piecing apart Loki’s hair so he could braid it.

“You stopped offering nearly fifty years ago,” Loki rebutted, and bared his teeth when Thor yanked on his hair. 

“I apologize,” Thor said, instead of the fiery response Loki expected. “I have seen, in your absence, how lax I have been in my care of you.”

“Care of me?” Loki repeated, attempting to get to his feet, but Thor’s grasp on his hair kept him on his knees. 

“When Father took you from Jotunheim, he took you with the intention of using you to broker peace. You were meant to be a treaty. But, instead, he took you in as my brother.” Thor held Loki’s hair tighter and twisted his head back so Loki was looking up at him. “He gave you to me.”

“I am not yours!”

Thor smiled at him. “You are my right hand, the guiding light in my life. And you say you do not belong to me? You are the voice in my ear.” He leaned closer. “Surely you have not forgotten when we were young and you pledged yourself to me on bended knee? I know what changed your mind. I have visions of prophecy, of what could befall me, of how I could lose you. I see us in space, a monster’s hand at your throat. I see myself fighting the Hulk. I see those things you write about. I see the future where we are not together and you say you do not belong to me?”

Loki summoned a dagger and pressed it to Thor’s side. “I know what happens. I know why I was sent back. But you cannot say I am yours when I have spent my life fighting to get from underneath your shadow!”

Releasing Loki’s hair, Thor stood up, and brought Loki with him. He pressed Loki up against the floor-length mirror and held his forearm to Loki’s throat. “I have seen what will come to pass if I do not keep you. Thanos will not win, not with you at my side.”

“If you had truly seen, you would know that I swore my undying fidelity to you! And he still killed me!”

Thor smiled, and it was dark, and it was something he had never seen before, and lightning sparked through the room. Loki dropped the dagger he was still holding.

“He killed you, and I brought you back. I grabbed you from the depths of Hel and tore you from death’s grasp. I gave us a chance to start over. But I will not make the same mistakes again.” He took a step back and pressed both of his hands to Loki’s shoulders, and the glamour fell away.

This was a Thor that even Loki had never seen. He had the same shorn hair, with a new, strange eye, and his face was creased with grief. He was powerful, and strong, and held lightning to his chest like a babe. 

Loki had always been drawn to power, either having it for himself or being as close to it as possible. The Thor that stood before him was the King Loki had been looking for his entire life. His palms itched with greediness.

Possibilities raced through his mind—if he did not agree, Thor would just send him back, again and again, until he learned his lesson. Whatever Thor had lived through after Thanos had killed Loki, it had changed him into something even Loki could not recognize. Thor had long gone somewhere that Loki could not follow, and this was the best he could do.

In every end, Loki had always given in to his brother, and he had always known his place.

He slid from Thor’s hands and fell to his knees.

“My King.”

* * *

The glamour was magic that Thor had learned in his other life from reading books that the Midgard witch had been guarding. He refused to give Loki the information on how he sent them both back, or what he had sacrificed to get them there. Such a spell would not be easy, especially for someone like Thor, who was not highly educated in seidr. 

They were still a few years off from Thanos coming to Midgard. Which meant everyone was still alive, and Loki could go through the witch’s library on his own. Strange, to know the fate of all existence.

Heimdall sent them to the Avengers Facility, the a different one than the one from where Loki had attempted to rule the world. It felt like a very long time ago, even if four years for an Asgardian was miniscule in their lifetime.

They all looked rather to kill him than work with him, but Thor, back under his glamour of long hair and two blue eyes and less scars, announced Loki with a smile, careful to keep Mjolnir hefted in his free hand. 

Loki wondered how he had gotten the hammer back.

The Avengers were silent, all on verge of attack, when Thor smiled again and said, “I know you would rather kill my brother than work with him, and understandably so. He has served penance for his crimes against your realm, and I believe, has learned his lesson, as you say. I give Midgard my oath that he will bring up no arms against your realm.”

“Your oath? You should’ve used that to try to stop him last time,” the Man of Iron shot back. 

“My brother and I have come to an agreement,” Thor replied, and pulled Loki forward.

They certainly had come to an agreement. Thor would not kill him and try again with a different version of Loki if Loki did what he wanted. It was something Thor didn’t want to do, but for his sake, and Loki’s sake, he would kill him over and over again if it saved the universe.

In the back of his head, Loki wondered how many of him had come before, if he had been the first one to give in. No time to think of that now, of course.

“I apologize for my actions against your world. I was acting upon my own volition, although the army behind me, and the staff in my hand, were powered by the Mad Titan. I see now that I have done great harm to your realm; however, it will be miniscule compared to what Thanos will do.” He took a minute to look at each of the Avengers, barely recognizing some of them. He had done his own research on the Avengers beyond what he learned from Clint Barton, but mortals were barely important enough to remember them beyond killing them.

“I have great power, and I have given my loyalty to Thor.” Strangely enough, he did not see understanding on any of their faces. He looked back at Thor and frowned, but his brother only motioned for him to continue. 

He did not want to do this.

Perhaps death would be preferable.

Loki went on bended knee before his brother and leaned into the hand Thor wrapped around his chin. “My King.”

Thor twisted his hand in Loki’s hair and pulled his head back. “My brother is no more threat to you than he is to me. As I said, we have come to an agreement.”

“Say we believe you,” the Captain said. He stepped around the table and motioned towards Loki. “How can he help?”

Thor allowed Loki to push to his feet, shaking his hand out of Loki’s hair. “I am one of the most powerful seidrmadrs in the Nine Realms,” Loki told them, although none of them seemed to understand the purpose behind his actions. What a strange realm. “I am very, very old, compared to any of you, and have spent nearly my entire life practicing and researching seidr. I have the entire library of Asgard to reference. I have killed many beings far more powerful than Thanos is now, and I know what he will do. But I do not know how to stop him.”

“What will he do?” the Black Widow asked.

“There are six Infinity Stones: Mind, Space, Soul, Power, Time, and Reality. An Infinity Stone represents, and controls, a different type of existence. I was given the task for Thanos to find him the Space Stone, which was inside the Tesseract. He gave me the Mind Stone inside the Scepter to invade Midgard. I assume it is safe on Asgard?” Thor nodded in affirmation. “Then we know the location of two Infinity Stones. They are immensely, immeasurably powerful. Very few can wield one.”

“And you wielded two?” the Captain asked, and a ripple of shock spread throughout the Avengers.

Loki basked in their awe, smirking smugly at them. “As I said, I am very powerful. The Stones did have their negative effects on me, but I was strong enough to wield two of them. Thanos….Thanos has the ability to wield all six Stones. He has a vision, one misshapen by time and greed. He intends to erase half of all life in the universe.”

The room went silent.

Loki took a step back so Thor was between him and the Avengers, as they exploded in questions and denial. 

“It’s not possible!” the Man of Iron finally yelled.

“It is very possible, Tony Stark,” Thor told him, voice grave. “He will destroy anything in his path. He believes that the only way to help the universe is to destroy half of it. If he has all six Infinity Stones, he will be the most powerful being in the universe. Nothing will be able to stop him.”

Thor hefted Mjolnir up and set it down on the table the Avengers were sitting at. The metal creaked beneath it. “I have dreams of the future. They do not always come to pass. A prophecy is never set in stone. I see what Thanos will do if he is not stopped.”

“What will he do?” the Captain asked.

“You will wish death upon yourselves. He will erase half of all life. Everywhere. Whoever you hold most dear will be gone. Any face that brings you joy or brings you peace will be erased. And there is no way of getting them back.”

“You’re certain of this?” the Man of Iron questioned, clearly baffled.

“More certain than I have ever been in my life,” Thor replied, and he pulled Loki out from behind him. “Show them.”

Loki lifted his hands, and showed them.

He watched the world end for each of them, one at a time, as Thor failed to kill Thanos with Stormbreaker, and as their loved ones disappeared into dust.

Once the magic was over, every gaze in the room was on Loki. “If this is true, then you will do everything in your power to stop this,” the Captain ordered, and Loki inclined his head. He did not mean to die, not again.

“It is true,” Thor said, “and it will happen if Thanos is not stopped.” 

They offered Loki a seat at the table, and he took the seat to the right of his brother.

The Midgard witch came forward from his place in the shadows and took the seat next to Loki. A very strange witch. Very powerful. Loki could feel the power rippling off him, but it felt wrong, hollow somehow. He had never encountered a Midgardian witch before; perhaps they all felt like this.

“Dr. Strange,” the man told Loki, and held out his hand.

“Are you the witch?” Loki asked, frowning down at the man’s hand. It was gloved, which Loki thought to be strange. Asgardians did not wear gloves around people they trusted. It made sense that the witch would wear gloves around Loki. 

The man glowered at him. “My name is Dr. Stephen Strange, and I am not a witch. I am a practitioner of the mystic arts.”

“Ah. Well met, then, Doctor. I am Loki, but you already knew that.” Loki waved off his hand and motioned down to the black suit he was wearing. “My brother calls these witch clothes. He should see the strange clothes you wear before calling me a witch.”

Instead of answering, Strange turned his head back to look at the other Avengers. “You will be staying with me,” he told Loki without looking at him. “Tony does not feel comfortable with you staying in his home.”

“Understandable. I only managed to destroy part of the last one. I would not want to feel compelled to finish the job.” 

Thor gave a bellowing laugh from next to him and slapped Loki on the back. “My brother! A joke! It has been a very long time.” He slammed his fist down on the table and did not seem to notice the dent he left. “Put your tricks to use and give us drinks, Loki.”

Happy to comply, Loki waved his hands and mugs of mead appeared in front of everyone at the table. Thor downed his in a few swallows, and Dr. Strange filled it with his own seidr. Thor grinned and bade everyone to drink.

Loki took a sip of his own mead and looked at Dr. Strange. He leaned a bit closer. “One time I spelled a chalice so that whenever Thor finished a drink, it would refill. He did not know that it refilled by taking the drink out of his stomach. He could drink dozens of glasses and not get drunk.” Emboldened by Strange’s small smile, Loki continued, “He only drank out of that chalice for nearly three years. He would not be intoxicated, no matter how many glasses he drank. He would challenge anyone to a drinking contest. One night, I finally agreed, but took the spell off the chalice. Only time I ever beat him in a drinking contest.”

“How many did it take?”

“He threw up at five cups. Even as a child he could drink more than that.”

“A child?” Strange queried.

“Ah, yes. Asgardians age very differently. We are allowed mead and certain types of wine from the time we are around 100 years of age.”

The Avengers, which had all been involved in testing Loki’s mead to see if it was poisoned, and small conversations of their own, all went quiet and looked to Loki and Thor.

“How old are you two, exactly?” Stark finally asked.

Thor frowned. “At my last count, I was 1500. My brother is only a decade or two younger than I am.”

“You were to be crowned King during your 1500th year, Thor,” Loki replied, and kept his gaze on the table.

Thor’s hand squeezed the back of his neck, fingers digging into his skin. “My coronation, yes. So I must be 1510 or so. I stopped counting at 1000.”

“How long do your people generally live?” Stark asked.

“Five thousand years, on average. Our royalty tend to live longer, however,” Loki replied. “Thor is not even halfway through his natural lifespan.”

“And you?” Stark questioned, turning his dark gaze on Loki.

“While my full ancestry is unknown, I am most likely half Asgardian and half Jotun, which means I should live a similar amount of time.”

“Wait, your full ancestry? I thought you were brothers?”

Loki looked back at Stark and Thor answered for him. “He is adopted, technically. But he is still my brother.”

Thor finished another mug and then looked over to Strange. “Witch, we will be needing a place to sleep. Loki will have a look through your library tomorrow.”

“My name is _Doctor_ Strange, and I will see to that. But you may come back to the Sanctum. I have prepared extra bedrooms.”

Thor excused them and picked up Mjolnir from the table as he followed Loki and Strange from the room. He laughed at Strange’s comment. “Loki will be sleeping in my room. Either that or he spends his nights locked up in chains.”

Loki made no reply.

Strange fashioned a portal for them and Loki walked around it, fascinated. The edges spun in some manner of gold and orange seidr. He could see through it and could sense that it was created by a very powerful seidrmadr, although it was a type of seidr he had never seen before. Given his long life, and the amount of time he had spent on other realms and planets researching seidr, it was novel to find something he had not seen before.

“Fascinating!” Loki exclaimed as he walked through the portal. “I am capable of creating a similar portal, but your seidr is very strange to me. I prefer my own seidr, of course. Much easier to deal with than messy portals.”

Thor walked around and examined a few artifacts around the Sanctum. They were standing near the top of the stairs, surrounded by various cabinets and stacks of books. Loki did not hide his interest, and Thor quickly pulled him back over to Strange, who was decidedly not amused.

“I saw what happened to me in that vision of yours,” Strange started, and Loki looked over to Thor, who was nodding. “I will spend tonight researching those abilities. I can see possible futures, but it must have been a skill I have not yet learned to show me that many and that quickly.” He turned to Thor. “What else happened? After Thanos….snapped?”

Thor rubbed his face with his hands. “Chaos. My people had been reduced to dozens, and were adrift in space. Half of Midgard’s population is four billion people, but Thanos didn’t reduce each planet by half as he claimed he would. He reduced all _existence_ by half. Midgard lost nearly five billion people. Everyone lost someone irreplaceable, every Avenger included. Chaos….is not word enough. I watched Midgard attempt to tear itself apart.

“After Stark made his way back to Midgard, we teamed up. But everyone was too lost. Everything we tried, failed. I spent six of your Midgardian months in your library, and read as much of it as I could. It was of very little help. I went to other realms and read through their knowledge. Even I went to Omnipotence City, and begged entrance into the Halls of All-Knowing. I sought out Those Who Sit Above. I searched for months, for any scrap of knowledge. It was all for nothing and I learned nothing. I knew then, that Loki was our only hope. He is very powerful, and very smart.”

Loki preened. 

“He will read through your library, witch.” Thor tossed Mjolnir up into the air and caught it again, the threat clear. “And then he will return to Asgard and read as many books as our father will allow him, and you are welcome to join, as I hear you are very smart as well. Then he will tell us how to defeat Thanos, and if he does not know by then, I will kill him, and start anew.”

“Start anew?” Strange questioned.

“I found in your library a way to resurrect someone, and send them back to a defining point in their life that ultimately lead to their death. I have used this spell on Loki, and I went back with him.”

“How many times have you done this?”

Thor refused to answer, instead asking where they would be sleeping. He bade goodnight to Strange and slammed the door in the angry man’s face, shoving Loki towards the bed.

“Brother,” Loki began, and Thor twisted his hand in Loki’s hair, pushing him to his knees. “I do not…”

“I will do it all again, a thousand times, if it means defeating Thanos,” Thor spat in his face, face red with fury. The glamour faded away and Loki was left with his stranger of a brother, this shattered God before him, reshaped into something Loki was simultaneously in awe and terrified of. “I want it to be you, but every Loki is my brother. You’re all the same manipulative, conniving, dangerous brother of mine. But you’re predictable, as much as you like to think you’re not. You will _always_ betray me to get what you want. I only hope that it takes longer and I have gained enough knowledge to make it worth it.”

“I don’t understand,” Loki gasped, and Thor threw him back towards the floor, keeping Loki on his back with his foot. “How many times have I died? For what mistakes? Is this my punishment?”

“You don’t need to understand. All you need is to do what you’re told, brother, and refrain from double-crossing me for as long as you can. If you defeat Thanos, I will not kill you, and I will not have to live through this again and again.” Thor replaced his foot with Mjolnir and watched Loki gasp for breath. “It won’t kill you, I can assure you. Now sleep. I will not give you the chance to strangle me in my sleep.”

Thor disrobed and got into bed, leaving Loki suffocating slowly on the floor. He knew he could not move Mjolnir, but attempted to push the hammer off anyway. It was immovable, and Loki yearned for a full breath.

What had happened to his brother to twist him so? What had Thor experienced in those months and years after Loki’s final death that would change him this much? Had Thor truly lived through this before, living through those years of Loki’s captivity and him researching with Strange and the Wakandans? How many times? How far had Loki gotten each time? If he had pulled the same Loki back, Loki would assume that every Loki would rather give Thor whatever he wanted than betray him. It wasn’t worth it. 

He had sworn his undying fidelity to Thor before Thanos had killed him, no matter how it had appeared to anyone else. Thanos had seen right through him, of course. Someone with the Power Stone would know immediately he had been lying. And Thanos, who had personally rummaged around in Loki’s brain, had known better than to trust anything Loki said.

But even before that, Thor trusted him more than this. Maybe unwarranted trust, but enough to sleep in a room with him. Loki would rather stab him and have him witness it than do it in the dark. 

Who was this Thor? What had his other selves done to him?

Was he going to kill Loki regardless? What was the point?

Thor grunted in the bed and Loki could hear him move around. “Brother,” Thor rasped. “Come here.” Mjolnir lifted off his chest and after a few deep breaths, Loki crawled onto the bed and let Thor wrap his arms around him.

“I will do anything to keep you, Loki,” Thor told him, and his arm across Loki’s chest felt as heavy as Mjolnir.

He stayed awake, long into the night, desperate to figure out what he could do to fix his brother, to get out of this. He hoped that somewhere in his readings he could find something to slip the bonds of this spell, or if not, then he would just cast a mind-soothing spell on himself and accept this Thor as he was.

For the first time in his life, Loki was determined to do whatever it took to make it all work out. He refused to know the fear of having his own brother kill him.


	3. CH3

Strange’s library was vast, and his friend and librarian, Wong, was plenty willing to help. Loki went to look around the library himself, and then paused, deciding to ask Strange for advice. He decided against taking any measures on his own, uncertain of how Thor would interpret it. 

Strange handed him a book that outlined the absolute basic beginnings of his Midgard seidr, and it was strangely interesting. Asgard was a world very involved in seidr, and Midgard was not. The spells that Strange used were energy based, and it was energy that wasn’t readily available on Midgard. Most of the concepts were familiar to him, in that he had learned similar theories when he had started in his studies, but it was still interesting enough that he deigned to read the book.

The book outlined how Midgardian ‘ _sorcerers_ ’, the book’s ridiculous name for their witches, could pull energy from other dimensions to wield seidr. That explained the portals. He had read few books in his life that had mentioned Midgardian seidr, and they all apparently were wrong or very outdated.

Loki closed the book and leaned back in his chair, crossing his right leg over his left as he lowly called for Strange to come over to him. Strange obliged, after a moment, his red cloak floating behind him. He took the seat directly across from Loki and inquired what he wanted. 

“In Asgard, seidr is a very personal thing. Every Asgardian has different levels, and different affinities, but it is something internal within us. For example, Thor is inclined towards elemental seidr, along with healing spells. I excel in many types of seidr, of course, and not least among those are illusions and different types of sensory manipulation, such as mental or physical. Your seidr is external, which is something I have only seen in rare occasions on my journeys. If you allow me, I would like to examine you to see if you have any latent seidr.”

“Surely you can do that without my permission?”

Loki waved him off. “Of course, but it’s considered rude, and,” he looked to where Thor was slowly paging through a book a few tables away from them, “I would just _hate_ to be thought of as rude when you have been such a gracious host.” He gave Strange a slick smile that only widened when the man rolled his eyes. 

“Fine.”

It was an easy bit of seidr. Loki used to cast it on Thor all the time just to watch Thor’s seidr tremble and bits of electricity to run down his arms. He held his hand out across the table and smiled again. “I will need to see one of your hands.”

“Thor, is this legitimate?”

“Yes,” Thor replied back, tiredly, without looking up from his book. “It will only take a minute, but it’s easier than him climbing into your lap. Which he will do.”

Oddly enough, Strange blushed slightly, and slowly removed one of his gloves. Loki made no mention of the peculiar scars on Strange’s long fingers, and merely took Strange’s hand in both of his own.

_Fascinating._

The human had a level of seidr that Loki had never seen before. It was astonishingly low. There were Asgardians who were incapable of wielding any seidr at all, and they had more latent seidr than this Midgardian. Somehow, Strange was still enormously powerful. 

Loki removed his hand from Strange’s and bridged his hands together under his chin, resting his elbows on the table to examine Strange. “You are far more interesting than I previously believed you would be,” Loki told him, and he watched carefully as Strange slowly put his glove back on. The red cape settled gracefully around Strange’s shoulders. “I can sense seidr from your cloak, but it is still unfamiliar to me. What is it?”

“It is the Cloak of Levitation,” Strange replied, gloved fingers dancing down the edge of it. “Our relics choose us, and this one chose me.”

Loki nodded at him and then turned back to the book, smoothing out the pages with his own hands. He had never felt such an _absence_ before; it made his fingers ache. Humans were so peculiar, so weak.

“What did you find in me?” Strange finally asked, the question sounding as if it had burnt his tongue. 

“Nothing,” Loki replied. “I do not understand how you are so powerful. Your physiology seems minimally capable of supporting Asgardian seidr, or any type of seidr for that matter. You pull everything from the world around you, and from multiverses. I have never seen anything like it before.”

Strange frowned at him. “How does magic feel to you?”

“It is constant. It is a burning need beneath my skin, filling me with fire. I can use it as easily as I can draw my next breath. It is no less part of me than my flesh is.”

Thor added from his table, “I have different magic than my brother, but it is similar. It takes no thought to bring forth a storm; it is something I am simply able to do. Anything more advanced does take thought and practice, but it is not truly difficult.”

Nodding in agreement, Loki expounded, “There are difficult branches of seidr, of course, ones that were difficult for even me to master. It takes decades of study to even begin to understand how to manipulate someone’s mind with seidr, for example. Or animal transformation. And I have dedicated my life to understanding and wielding seidr. But Midgardians are different. It is very interesting.”

“Show me,” Strange demanded, and Loki looked to Thor, who got up from his table and came over to stand behind Loki.

“What would you like to see?” Loki asked, and when he received no immediate answer, he surrounded the table with replicas of himself, all of them in different outfits, and at different stages in his life. At both Strange and Wong being stunned into silence, Loki smugly reincorporated the replicas back into himself, and then folded out various version of Thor, all the way from the Thor that Loki remembered as a child, the illustrious and almighty older brother, to the cruel, strange man that nearly killed him with Mjolnir last night.

Thor gasped, and walked around the replicas, stopping back at the Thor that Loki could barely remember from the _Statesman_ , the brother that Loki had declared his undying fidelity to. “How is it that you see me, brother?”

Loki shook his head, refusing to answer. He didn’t need the retaliation from this Thor, and he let Thor look at the various replicas for a few minutes longer before he had them fade away.

Strange whistled. “Impressive. I have read about such magics, but have been insofar yet incapable of replicating myself. I have been busy with rebuilding the Sanctum and cataloging the library and the various artifacts.”

“My most powerful skill is illusions, such as the duplicates, or changing myself.” Loki waved a hand and his suit changed from black to bright green and back again. “But I am just as well versed in many other schools of seidr. I have never found myself capable of elemental magic as Thor is, however. I can conjure up flames but that is nothing compared to the skills of my dear King.”

“I would ask to see these skills, Thor, but I am afraid you would burn down the Sanctum.”

Thor laughed, stepping up behind Loki again. “There is a reason I am called the God of Thunder, Doctor. Now, do you require any more proof that Loki is as powerful as he says he is? Again, he must be researching ways to defeat Thanos.”

Strange shook his head and Loki went back to paging through the book. It took a few minutes of Thor standing behind Loki and watching him read over his shoulder before Thor was satisfied, and he went back to his table.

They settled into a routine over the next few days—Thor holding Loki close at night, and Loki being careful not to anger his brother, and then spending the day reading and researching with Strange and Wong—before Thor was being called back to the Avengers Facility. Understandably, he did not want to take Loki with him, and Strange shrugged, saying that he could watch over Loki for him.

Loki watched his brother step through Strange’s portal, and felt a simultaneous weight lift off his shoulders as a cold fist wrapped around his heart. 

Strange led him to a different table they usually sat at, and handed Loki a cup of tea. “Doctor?” Loki questioned, taking a sip of the tea. 

“I know that your relationship with your brother is complicated and convoluted and a millennia old, but I have some questions, if you don’t mind.”

Loki shrugged. “I am a book open for your perusal.”

Strangely enough, Strange had that same peculiar blush on his cheeks again, and he cleared his throat and leaned forward in his chair. “How did you die?”

“Which time?”

“Thanos,” Strange replied, not even looking perturbed at the thought of Loki dying more than once. How very interesting.

“I attempted to deceive him after giving him the Tesseract. He did not believe me, and broke my neck in the process of choking me to death. I do not remember many things from that timeline, but that is something I surely will never forget.”

Strange nodded. “Soon after I became a Master of the mystic arts, a terrible evil came to Earth. It’s name was Dormammu. It used the Dark Dimension to live eternally, and was coming to Earth to destroy it. I used the Eye of Agamotto to trap it in a time loop.”

“My hero,” Loki purred, and Stephen flushed, turning away from him and taking a long sip of tea. Loki smiled into his cup. “You do realize that your necklace holds an Infinity Stone?” Loki remarked, after a few moments of uncomfortable silence, taking another sip of his tea.

“I have been told something similar, yes. Let me finish.” Strange cleared his throat and met Loki’s gaze again. “Dormammu killed me over one thousand times. I remember each of those deaths as if they happened to me today. But I sacrificed myself because the world is bigger than I am. I believe you must do the same thing.”

“I already have done so,” Loki replied smoothly. “Perhaps not yet, but I laid down my life so my brother could live. If he chose to kill me today, I would kneel before him and allow him to take my life without quarrel. I gave him my fidelity. That does not change, no matter the brother that stands before me.”

“I have sensed a very strong shielding spell around him.”

“Not a shielding spell, Doctor, but a glamour. I was not the only one to come to this time. Thor merely came from a place I could not follow.”

“What did he experience?”

“He will not tell me. I only know that he suffered beyond my comprehension after Thanos destroyed half of all life, and it is my duty to make sure he does not experience that again.”

“From what I have heard of you, Loki, you would never put your life in front of someone else’s like this.”

Loki looked down into his empty cup and then set it on the table in front of them. “The Loki that came before me did not realize that my brother comes before all else, that no power is greater than serving at my brother’s side.”

Strange, very slowly, took his gloves off and tucked them away inside his peculiar red cloak. “You mean to tell me the man that attempted to invade Earth would have been happier if he had only stayed on Asgard?”

Loki took a deep breath to quell the flush of emotion that rose in his chest. “Doctor, I can tell you this—if I had not been greedy, if I had not been jealous, if I had only _seen_ , I could have known that my place was one step behind my brother, my silver-tongue at his ear, my advice the only thing he could hear. But I could not _see_ , and therefore I was jealous, and petty, and cruel. I spent 1000 years at his feet and could only see the shadow he cast, not the space I had been given to grow. But whatever this version of Thor wants from me, he will get. I do not know how many times I have let him down, how many times he’s done this again, like you had to be killed by Dormammu, but I will _not_ let him live without me. Not again.”

Strange leaned forward and held out one of his scarred, shaking hands. Loki carefully took that hand in one of his own, and made the spell to check for the amount of seidr the Midgard witch had in him. Same result, but Loki, for some strange reason, did not want to take his hand away.

The witch merely gave him an inscrutable look. “I find myself thankful that you have come here. When Tony Stark told me that you and Thor would be staying here, I was cautious, to say the least. But I have learned far more in these few days than I realized possible.”

Whatever peculiar, tender mood they had cultivated, was blown apart as Thor stormed up the stairs. Loki snatched his hand back and frantically looked for a book to show as if he had been reading, and Strange pulled his gloves back on.

“Loki!” Thor bellowed, and Loki was on his feet, headed toward his brother, before he realized what he was doing.

“I am here, Thor,” he called out, and stood passively as Thor wrapped a hand around his neck and looked him over with dark, stormcloud eyes.

“The Avengers ask if you have found anything,” Thor questioned, pulling Loki to sit at a table far away from Strange, who immediately got up to went to join them, keeping cautious to sit on the opposite side of the table from the brothers.

Loki took the seat Thor directed him to, swallowing around the thumb that pressed into his throat. “No, Thor. It has only been a few days. I apologize. What did you learn at your meeting?”

“Nothing to interest you,” Thor said, taking his hand away from Loki and turning his attention to Strange. “Tony Stark asks you to come to the Facility whenever you are available. He has questions for you.”

Strange inclined his head and created a portal behind him, stepping quickly through it. They heard Stark’s loud surprised shriek before the portal closed, and Thor chuckled.

“Have you been reading this morning?” Thor questioned, suddenly turning back to Loki. “Is the witch distracting you? Perhaps I should keep in you in my room instead, and bring books to you to keep you from being distracted.”

Loki held up his hands and after a moment of thought, went to his knees at Thor’s side. “My King, I am here to defeat the Mad Titan. I have no other motives, other than keeping you happy.”

Thor frowned at him and then patted his coat pockets. He seemed strangely comfortable in Midgardian clothes. He pulled a strange looking collar out of one of the pockets and held it up to the light. “Tony Stark gave me this. Do you remember the obedience disks on Sakaar?”

Loki froze. Oh yes, he remembered. He remembered shaking on the floor for hours after he had attempted to betray Thor. He remembered the _agony_. “Yes, Thor….I remember.”

“This is meant to be similar. Tony Stark wishes you would wear it. It would give him your vitals, as he called them, and your location, possibly what you are thinking, even. The technology on this realm is very far behind Asgard’s, but sometimes Tony Stark manages to surprise me.” Thor met Loki’s eyes. “I have thought for a good while today on whether or not I would have you wear it. What do you think?”

He wanted to scream. He was not an _animal_ that needed to be collared and chained up, only to be let out for the fight. He was not meant to be collared and kept to heel. For all the calluses on his knees, he was not Thor’s _pet_. 

But he swallowed his pride, and his damaged ego, and pushed down whatever part of his soul wanted to run. “I do not wish to, but I will wear it if you ask.”

Loki expected Thor to immediately snap the collar around his neck, but his brother faltered. “You would let me?” Thor questioned, baring his teeth. “You would sit there and let me collar you?”

“If it would keep you from killing me, then yes,” Loki replied, unable to look away from the collar. Perhaps he could be grateful it was not another muzzle. “And if it would help you regain your trust in me, then without a doubt.”

Thor’s hand twisted in his hair and he pulled Loki half into his lap, yanking Loki’s head back so they were looking eye to eye. “You have never agreed to this before.”

Interesting. So Thor had gotten this far before with other versions of Loki. Perhaps he had never gotten past this? Surely Thor would have killed him and restarted the process if Loki had refused the collar. How many times had Thor done this, gone to the Avengers Facility and listened to the same speech about keeping an eye on Loki and taken the collar, knowing he would have to kill his brother for refusing it?

“I am yours, brother,” Loki gasped. “Yours to do with as you wish. Collar me if you must.”

Thor sat back and released Loki’s hair, cradling his brother’s jaw in his hands. “You have never done this before. What kind of trick is this?”

He tried to shake his head but Thor’s hands wouldn’t let him. “No tricks. No lies. I know that I once gave myself to you. I know my place, and it is with you. Whatever that may mean.”

“You will accept it, then. The collar?”

Loki swallowed and closed his eyes as Thor closed the cold metal collar around his neck. It clicked shut and he felt a small prick on the back of his neck.

And then nothing.

* * *

Loki slowly pushed through the darkness, and listened to Strange and Thor talk about the sedative that had been pushed into Loki’s bloodstream. Thor explained it was something Stark had fashioned from Thor’s own blood, and it was possibly one of the few Midgard substances that could truly knock an Asgardian unconscious. A safeguard, in case Loki went out of line.

Well, at least it didn’t kill him.

Loki opened his eyes to see his brother standing between him and Strange. “Brother,” Loki rasped, and he brought up a hand to rub at his eyes. “What did I do?”

Thor spun around and strangely enough, concern flooded his face. “Loki! I did not realize the collar would hurt you immediately. I have asked Stark to come here to take it off.” He rushed over to help Loki sit up, and Loki looked around to see that they were in Thor’s room. “You were unconscious for nearly two hours. It is a very powerful poison.” Strange came closer and moved his hands over Loki, nodding slightly. “I refuse to let the Man of Iron be able to incapacitate you so completely, and so quickly. Brother...I apologize.”

Large hands tipped his face up and Loki met Thor’s gaze. His brother, whoever he was. “Please take it off,” Loki replied instead, and he looked over to Strange.

“It is not the type of lock I can undo with magic.”

Loki raised one green seidr-covered hand, but Thor quickly pressed it back down to the bed. “Stark was very clear that unconsciousness would be the best result if you attempted to remove the collar yourself. We will have to wait.”

Thor helped Loki out of bed, and they followed Strange out of the room. Oddly enough, it was difficult for Loki to walk, and he found himself leaning heavily on his brother. Thor helped him get settled in a plush armchair, and then pulled up a chair next to him. Strange took the armchair across from Loki and floated over a tea set and a mug of ale for Thor.

They drank in silence, Thor keeping his eyes locked on Loki. After a few minutes, Thor rested his mug on his knee and shook his head. “I can see now why you have previously refused the collar. Perhaps you previously sensed what it would do to you.” He sat back and looked thoughtful for awhile, and then spoke, “If I have to go through this again, I will not take the collar from Stark.” He lifted his mug, as if in celebration, and drank deeply from it.

Ah yes. Because Loki, even as he was his own person, was still expendable. Still, even after sacrificing himself, worthless. Thor could kill him a million times and not think twice, not if he once figured out how to defeat Thanos. And his reward for that would be to live. A poor reward in his opinion.

“How many times have you done this?” Strange questioned, and again, Thor refused to answer. Loki wondered if he even kept count. Strange looked vaguely sick, and looked quizzically at Loki over the edge of his cup.

He was not the type of person to beg, but Loki suddenly wanted to plead for his life, as if it could somehow change Thor’s mind if it came to that. Instead, he shook his head at Strange and kept his eyes on the floor. He was here by Thor’s grace, and he would keep that in mind. Even more than killing Thanos, he refused to know the fear of Thor killing him. Never again, in this life or the next. 

It didn’t take long for Stark to arrive, and he argued with Thor for a few minutes before grudgingly working on removing the collar. “I can design it to not knock him unconscious immediately,” Stark offered, but Thor shook his head. 

“No. My brother does not need monitored, and he surely does not need you with your finger on the button, sending him to sleep whenever you feel like it.” Thor picked up Mjolnir. “If Loki steps out of line, I am perfectly capable of taking care of him myself.”

Loki did not attempt to hide his wince. Yes, he was certain Thor could take care of him plenty well. 

“So you’re just going to bash his head off with your big hammer?” Stark asked, actually sounding shocked, as if he hadn’t underhandedly designed something that would send Loki into unconsciousness whenever he had the whim for it.

“Not quite. But I can incapacitate him, temporarily or permanently,” Thor replied, unperturbed.

Strange shook his head and quietly left the room.

Loki let out a long sigh of relief when the collar was finally removed, and he rubbed at his neck while Stark put the collar in the briefcase he had brought with him. Thor came closer and fisted his hand in Loki’s hair, pulling his head down so he could look at the back of Loki’s neck.

“Do you have some manner of healing cream, Doctor?” Thor called out, and Strange came back into the room a moment later with a small tube in his hands.

Thor escorted Stark out of the Sanctum as Strange looked over the small needle mark on the back of Loki’s neck. “Hold still,” Strange told him, and he pulled off one of his gloves to apply a bit of cream to the back of Loki’s neck. “It was a small gauge needle, but it looks like it went deep. I doubt you have anything to worry about, however.”

“Thank you, Doctor,” Loki replied, and used a bit of seidr as a hair tie as he twisted his hair into a bun on the top of his head.

Strange came around to take the seat in front of him and paused when he looked down at Loki. Orange sparks fluttered around his ungloved hand for a moment, and then Strange made a weak fist and shoved his hand back into the glove.

Interesting.

“You can call me Stephen,” Strange finally offered, pouring both himself and Loki another cup of tea. 

Ah. Loki smiled into the proffered cup, feeling a well of satisfaction draw up deep in his gut.

“We’ll be working together for a long time as it is, I don’t need to be called Doctor,” Strange continued, and Loki nodded in agreement.

“An honor, Stephen,” he replied silkily, and he smiled, turning his attention to his brother as he stormed up the stairs.

“Thank you for having the collar removed, Thor,” Loki told him, and handed his brother his full mug of ale. Thor swallowed it down quickly and then shook his head.

“Do not thank me. I should not have trusted Stark with you.” Thor watched as his mug refilled itself and he nodded at Strange. He stepped forward and tugged on Loki’s bun, examining the back of Loki’s neck. “I should not be so free with my possessions, after all.” Rough fingers traced the line the collar had lain on, and Loki let his head settle into the warm pocket of Thor’s palm. “You did good.”

Even as a plaything, even as someone his brother saw as a mere tool to defeat Thanos, it felt good. All Loki had ever wanted was his brother’s approval. All he had ever wanted was to be as _good_ as Thor. Perhaps this was his penance, and he would serve it dutifully and as joyfully as he was able.

Perhaps he would always live his life in Thor’s shadow, but he could create his own light there. He was the voice in the King’s ear, the trusted advisor, the last word of advice. A King’s true purpose was to serve his people; the man behind the King held the true power. At the end of it all, that was enough. He did not even have to lie to himself; it truly was enough. He loved his brother more than he desired power or greatness; it was only pitiful it had taken him so long and so many years and so much pain for him to realize that truth within himself. Better to serve in Heaven than reign in Hel, or however the Midgard saying went.

Thor helped him over to a desk and brought Loki the books he had been researching through the day prior. Strange took a seat across from him, and his cloak floated off his back and around the desk to hover next to Loki. 

“It is concerned about you, as am I,” Strange admitted. “Thor explained to me that Stark had once injected him with a similar sedative, and it did not cause such body pains, nor unconsciousness for such a length of time.”

“I am only outwardly Asgardian. I have a theory that I am half Asgardian, by blood, but I am a Frost Giant. Clearly Stark did not take that into account, or Thor did not think to mention it, and the sedative affected me differently.”

Strange swallowed noisily. Loki watched his throat work. “If you would be more comfortable in that form, I do not take offense to you removing the glamour.”

Loki only shook his head. Surely Thor would send Mjolnir through his head if he slid out of this skin. He did not need to remind his brother of the monster he truly was. He was alive only on Thor’s whim and good mood, as it was.

“I am perfectly comfortable as I am, but I appreciate the gesture.” Loki turned his attention back to the books and continued reading, ignoring the way Strange continued to look at him for a long time.

From behind a bookshelf, Thor watched his brother and the doctor with a frown on his face.


	4. CH4

They spent months researching in the Sanctum. Thor slowly grew to trust Loki with a small measure of independence, and Loki was eventually allowed a small cot at the foot of Thor’s bed. He rarely slept in it, as Thor preferred the two of them to sleep together, and Thor still didn’t trust him not to sneak off in the middle of the night, and ended up chaining Loki’s wrist to Mjolnir. If it made his brother feel better, then Loki forced himself to be comfortable with it, even if the feel of metal on his body made him gag.

He spent nearly the entire day with Stephen Strange, every day, the two of them discussing different spells and theories and Thor occasionally chiming in with methods they had tried before he had gone to the past. Thor was explicit in saying that he wanted to deliver the killing blow, and both Loki and Stephen were working to make that possible. Hopefully it truly would be. All they had to do was find the bastard first.

Loki was comfortable. He had lived this long, and was safe as long as he did what he was told and he kept to Thor’s side. There was not a light at the end of the tunnel, but there was hope for one. 

Although he was no match for both Loki’s own intelligence and seidr ability, Stephen was powerful, and intelligent enough for a mortal. Loki was extremely powerful in his own right, and as he grew to get to know Stephen and his strange seidr, he realized that Stephen had an admittedly admirable instinct for seidr. He was nothing compared to Loki, of course, but Loki did enjoy watching him as he practiced. Wong was also powerful enough, with more years of study under his belt, and Loki often eavesdropped on their conversations while he was researching.

Thor began to leave them alone, for short stretches at a time. At first, it was only for an hour or two, and then Thor would be gone when Loki woke up and he would return shortly after dark. There was a fireplace in Thor’s room, and he had dragged in a small couch, where he would sit before bed and Loki would kneel at his feet as Thor brushed his hair and fed him. He would swear fealty every night if that was what it took.

When they were young, once they had fully come together, Loki had taken comfort in his submission to Thor. There was too deep a gulf between them now, but it was a familiar role for him, something his seidr needed and his body and mind craved.

Thor calmed, and eventually stopped wearing his glamour altogether. He seemed far more comfortable with his short hair and his mismatched eyes, and whatever grief that had creased his face slowly began to soften. Loki was doing his best, and it seemed as if it was enough.

And then, their father called them home.

Thor slammed Loki into the wall and pressed his forearm to Loki’s throat. Loki gasped and writhed and begged, “I’ve done nothing! I have not left this building since you brought me here the first time. I have been good, brother, I swear.”

Thor was a fish out of water. It was becoming abundantly clear to Loki that he had been the first one to make it this far; Thor had killed every Loki before him. He still refused to tell anyone how many times he had done this before, and Loki was beginning to suspect it amounted in the hundreds. He had a feeling that Thor had been so desperate and furious that he had killed the first few Loki’s for looking at him wrong, or other imperceptible threats. 

Calming, Thor stepped back, keeping Loki pressed against the wall by Thor’s hands on his shoulders. “You must have something planned. Have you been plotting this from the start? Is this a ploy to get me home and then, what, Father is dead? Is Thanos at Asgard? What have you done?!” Thunder boomed outside and Loki shook in his boots.

He was _insane_. There was nothing Loki could even _say_ —”I have done nothing other than what you have asked of me!” Thoughts racing, Loki tried to understand where Thor’s paranoia even came from; had he not laughed at a joke, or laughed too hard, or was his subservience suspect enough? He didn’t want to die, he didn’t want Thor to kill him. He didn’t want Thor to have to kill another hundred Loki’s a hundred more times, until he pulled one out of time just broken enough that Thor could break him down into pieces, pieces that he could reshape into whatever he wanted. Thanos had done it first and Thor was only following in his footsteps—

A bright shield of orange seidr shoved Thor away from him, and Loki could not stop himself from crumpling to the floor. Stephen stepped in front of him. “He has done _nothing_ ,” Stephen spat, and Thor roared.

Lightning flashed outside and Thor threw Mjolnir directly at Stephen, who deflected it with a shield. “What is your goal here, Thor?” Stephen yelled. “You want to do this all over again? You want to kill your brother and tear down the Sanctum and for what? Some worry in the back of your head that you know isn’t even true? How could Loki have gone behind your back to do _anything_? You have him under lock and key, researching the Infinity Stones and Thanos every minute he is awake, and you strap him down at night. You threaten him with death if he so much as breathes wrong. Even Loki isn’t stupid enough to go against you.”

The storm outside darkened.

Thor lifted his hammer and yelled for Heimdall. In a flash of rainbow light, the Bifrost tore him away, and Stephen was on his knees in front of Loki in the next second. 

Loki let Stephen help him to his feet but shook his head at the doctor’s questioning gaze. “I will wait for his return,” Loki told him, and he made his way to the desk he had been using. Stephen followed him and then angrily paced, his cloak fluttering out behind him.

“You have done everything he has asked of you,” Stephen finally said, turning on Loki. “He has everything—”

Bright light flooded the Sanctum, and suddenly, Loki and Stephen were inside the Observatory, and Thor, Odin, Frigga, and Heimdall were waiting for them. 

Stephen looked around in awe as Loki hastened to his brother’s side, inclining his head to Odin and pressing a brief kiss to his mother’s cheek. They quickly introduced themselves and Odin had them follow him to his throne room. Loki quickly used seidr to change his clothes from his more comfortable Midgardian clothes into his more formal and rigid royal Aesir leathers. 

He tried to get a sense of what Odin was going to tell him from Thor’s face, but he was dark and clouded over, a statue. Thor’s hand was tight and white-knuckled on Mjolnir’s handle. Loki turned back to see Stephen trailing behind them, walking slowly as he tried to take everything in. He wished to walk with him, to explain everything Stephen was seeing, but Thor’s elbow jerked into his side, and Loki faced forward again, staying his place.

It was a long walk back to the palace. It had only felt further few times before. But this was the first time in months—Loki had not allowed himself to keep track of time, but he thought it had been six months since Thor had brought him to the Sanctum—that he had been outside. He had gone from being imprisoned in Asgard to a different type of prison on Midgard. It felt good to walk again, to see the sun, to smell the grass and the trees and feel the wind on his face. 

They were close to the palace when Stephen came up next to Loki and put his gloved hand on Loki’s arm. “This is where you and Thor were raised? This is the most beautiful place I have ever seen.”

Loki smiled slightly. “Yes, this is Asgard, our home. I would hope our cold welcome will not color your experience here. Perhaps a time will come when I can give you a proper tour.” He looked up at the looming palace and wondered when he had begun feeling like a stranger here.

A few servants and guards greeted them, and he saw a few questioning looks thrown at Stephen, but they walked too quickly for Stephen to pause and take in any of the decor or artwork. They arrived in the smaller throne room, the one not used for ceremonies, and Odin bellowed for all of the guards to leave.

Thor stood in front of Odin and Frigga, and Loki stepped up next to him, Stephen hanging off to the side, surely unsure of what he was even doing there. “Have you learned anything in your research?” Frigga asked, smiling down at Loki.

“A bit. There are Midgardian writings about the Infinity Stones; they have some mythos regarding a few of them. But nothing concrete. Thor told me that we would soon be coming back to Asgard to go through the library here, as we are nearly finished with Dr. Strange’s resources.” Loki looked to see if his brother had anything to add, but his brother was as stone-faced and cold as he had been when Loki had arrived. He continued, “There are some writings on Thanos, a few historical documents that were presumably left on Midgard when Asgardians were there, around a thousand or so years ago. It outlined how he had been defeated the first time, and sent to live in isolation on a desolate planet near Titan. Most things I had already learned from my time...with him and his Children.”

Frigga tapped her fingers on the arm of her throne. “What research have you done from your personal library, before we allow you to take books off this Realm?”

Loki stiffened. “None of my personal books mention anything about the Infinity Stones.” His mother gave him a searching look but she accepted his information with a nod.

“The Infinity Stones and their locations?” Odin asked.

“Two of them are on Asgard, at least one on Midgard. Those three are well protected. There is very little on Midgard about the Stones, much less of their locations. I believe Thor had mentioned that the Collector on Knowhere has the Reality Stone?” 

Thor bared his teeth as Odin sighed. “Not anymore. Thanos destroyed Knowhere and took the Stone, and killed the Collector. He has the Reality Stone.”

Loki straightened in his boots and carefully sent out waves of seidr, confirming everything around him was real. He felt Stephen do the same thing with his seidr, and after being confident enough that Thanos wasn’t tricking them into telling him the location of the remaining Stones, Loki turned back to Odin and Frigga.

“I have good knowledge that Thanos knows the locations of the Soul Stone and the Power Stone. The Power Stone will be easier for him to collect, as the knowledge of how to retrieve the Soul Stone is lost to time,” Odin told them, his voice quiet and grave. Loki frowned at him but didn’t say anything.

“Then we will stay here,” Thor declared, turning his head to look at Thor and Stephen. “Thanos must be stopped.”

Loki nodded immediately and when he didn’t hear agreement from Stephen, he turned to look at him. Stephen was frowning at them, his cloak fluttering around his calves. “I cannot abandon my life and my post on Earth,” he told them. “I have a duty.”

Odin nodded and held up his hand as Thor stepped forward to argue. “Understandable. I believe it would make more sense for you to return back to Midgard, as you are one of the realm’s protectors, and Loki and Thor will spend their time alternating between Asgard and Midgard. Is that acceptable?”

Loki looked to Thor, who took a moment to think about it before nodding in agreement. “I will talk to the Doctor and figure out a schedule.” He turned to Loki. “I will meet you in our rooms.”

Pausing, Loki kissed his mother’s hand and briefly touched Stephen on the shoulder before he left the throne room and made his way to his and Thor’s rooms. He wanted to stay on Midgard, but he would do as he was told. Disregarding his own attraction to the witch, he did genuinely enjoy Stephen’s company. While he was soul bound to Thor, he felt a compatibility with Stephen that he had not experienced before. Stephen was similar to him in that neither of them were particularly good people, but they were trying to be better.

Loki sat down on a settee in the shared seating area connecting his and Thor’s rooms, and waited. He looked out the window, out past the fields and the great waters and into the darkness beyond. This was the most freedom he’d had in years, he realized, and looked around. Thor wasn’t anywhere near, he wasn’t tied down to anything...his instinct was to run. He even pushed to his feet, gathered his seidr to him, but then remembered the manic look on Thor’s face that morning…Thor would chase him to the ends of the universe. He would spend the rest of his life running, if he even made it out of the castle.

He crumpled to the floor, feeling as if he was a puppet with its strings cut. He had spent these last few months living in a constant, low-level state of panic, terrified that opening his mouth would cause Thor to crush Mjolnir through his skull. And he knew that this was his existence. This was his life for the rest of time.

Perhaps other Loki’s, the ones before him, had realized this and had intentionally raised Thor’s ire. Was it better to live in fear or to not live at all?

The door opened and Loki stayed on the floor. A pair of boots moved slowly around the room and then quickly to him, and a gloved hand cautiously rested on his shoulder. A heavy blanket settled over him and Loki lifted his head to see the Cloak of Levitation tucked around his shoulders.

“Loki,” Stephen breathed, and settled down on the floor next to him. “I came to tell you goodbye.”

“Thank you, Stephen,” Loki told him, picking up the edge of the cloak and examining it. He leaned against the settee and smiled slightly up at the doctor. “Did Thor tell you when I would be returning to Midgard?”

“You will be in Asgard for a few days, collecting books and scrolls, was my understanding. And then you would be sent to Earth so that we could research them together. It seems that Thor still does not...trust you.”

“He has good reason,” Loki told him, and he looked out the wide window in front of them. “As much as I wish it were not true, my brother has very good reason to not trust me alone.”

“Even now?” Stephen questioned. “Even though you spend every second trying to please him, only to be shot down like a kicked dog?”

“I am a threat to my brother. He does not want to admit it, but he does not want to keep doing this. He wants out of the cycle he created for himself, but he cannot look at me and see me; he only sees the numerous other Loki’s that came before him, the ones he believed he had to kill to get to me. He sees the brother that betrayed him.”

“I see you,” Stephen told him, but before Loki could reply, Thor walked into the sitting room and rushed over to glare down at the two of them.

“What did you do to my brother, witch?”

Stephen shook his head and pushed to his feet, his cloak settling around his shoulders. “I found him like this.” He held his hands out to his sides. “You have a very beautiful home, Thor. I can see why you wanted our research to take place here.”

Thor helped Loki to his feet and he drew a cautious eye over his brother, and Loki tucked himself under the arm that Thor put over his shoulders. He leaned into his brother’s side and watched Stephen leave through heavily lidded eyes. 

“You must rest,” Thor told him, and he put Loki to bed, sliding under the covers next to him. Their clothes laid in a heap at the foot of the bed, and Loki let his cold skin be warmed by his brother’s sweltering heat.

“Why am I so tired?” Loki asked the ceiling.

“I think you know the reason,” Thor replied, and he set Mjolnir on the far side of the bed, so Loki was trapped between it and his brother.

Instead of thinking about that, Loki closed his eyes, and let sleep come for him.

* * *

Asgard’s library was vast, and beautiful, and Loki had missed it dearly. There were rooms upon rooms, all of them stretching to the faraway ceiling, and it was quiet. He was the only patron, as Odin had closed the library to citizens until they were through. 

Thor was in private conference with Odin, and Loki was alone. There was a guard stationed outside each entrance and exit, but there was nobody inside the library with him.

He took a moment, just to revel in it. Nobody around, nobody to tell him what to do, nobody to watch his every movement for hints of treachery. Just himself and the silence.

He had always treasured silence. It was a rare treat that he would hoard away in his room, something he had little taste of as he grew up. He had only Thor and his mother for companionship, as his personality and social standing left much to be desired amongst his peers, and spent the rest of his time in the library, or sometimes out in the forests, or alone in his room. He was generally too caustic or cruel to anyone his age, partly a defense mechanism from Thor’s treatment of him, and partly from being a prince amongst the common folk. 

If there was a place on Asgard where Loki felt at home, it was amongst the books.

It was organized loosely by subject, but Loki knew there would be no Infinity Stone or ‘Defeat a Mad Titan’ section. But he had spent years within these walls, and he had a decent idea of where to start.

Their goal was to gather as many possible reference books as possible and take them back to Midgard. It was no easy task, as every book that turned out to be a failed lead was wasted time and time that Thanos was using to get closer to another Infinity Stone. 

Humming an old Asgardian fighting song under his breath, Loki quickly found a few history tomes that held various accounts of Thanos’s first defeat, and he began setting up a small pile on the largest table in the middle of the library’s main room. 

A few hours passed in peaceful quiet, and the pile of books grew ever so larger. He remembered reading about the Infinity Stones when he was younger, only snippets in massive ancient tomes, but any information was better than what they had before. He was in the middle of taking two heavy books down to the table when the main doors of the library slammed open.

“Brother!” Thor cried out, and Loki froze on the steps.

“I am here, Thor!” he called back, and Thor jogged up to him, a small smile on his face.

“You have been hard at work! This is as many books as I expected you would find in a week, not one morning.” Thor took the books from Loki’s hands and led him back to the table. There were easily over a hundred books in small, haphazard piles. Loki pointed to a pile that held other possible knowledge about the Stones and Thor obligingly put the books there.

“In fact, let us take the afternoon off,” Thor suggested, turning back to Loki, a wide smile on his face. “I have missed being in Asgard with you. We should go into the woods.”

Loki nodded automatically, and then cautiously caught himself and stretched out a hand to rest it on Thor’s forearm. “You will not…”

Thor shook his head immediately and waved his hand around, as if to show Loki what he had accomplished. “You have done more than I ever expected.” He led Loki out of the library with a hand on Loki’s back. “Have I told you that I was close to giving up? Every Loki before you was not what I needed. I had begun to believe that Thanos would never be defeated. But you, my brother, have given me hope again.”

They stepped through the front doors of the palace and Loki paused, looking down on the world beneath them. The city was filled, people working and selling goods and walking through the same streets that Loki and Thor used to run through as children. Thor pulled him down to the path to the forests, and Loki followed obligingly behind, changing his outfit into something more suitable for travelling—boots, thin black pants, and a thin, dark green tunic that covered him from neck to wrist. 

It was warm out, and the mottled sunlight shining through the tall trees felt heavenly on his face. Loki paused, tilting his head back, breathing it all in.

“I have not been outside in nearly five years,” he told his brother, and Thor turned back to watch him.

“I will see if the witch has some type of garden or something for you,” Thor finally offered, and Loki smiled at him, as brightly as he could manage. Perhaps there was some future for him, for them together. Perhaps he could look past what had been taken from him, and he could look toward what he was being given.

Loki looked out into the deep woods. He could live like this, taking his bits of freedom where he could get them. He was stronger than Thor gave him credit for. Perhaps there was hope to be had, after all.

* * *

They spent the afternoon in the woods, and that night, Mjolnir rested on it’s table, and Loki was unbound. He woke up alone, with the sheets cold, and Thor did not come to escort him to the library. He recognized it for the test it was, and after taking part in the small breakfast that had been left for him, Loki made his way to the library, quickly getting back to work. 

It was another few days of the same routine. Thor was nowhere to be found, and Loki found himself enjoying the quiet, the cold sheets, the open bed, the massive pile of books on the table.

He hadn’t made a dent in the thousands and thousands of books in the library, but it was a place to start. He was hopeful Thor would see it similarly whenever he deigned to return.

Thor came back as Loki was eating dinner in their rooms, staring out over the great water and beyond. He did not hear his brother returning and flinched at the hand at the back of his neck, but then quickly leaned into it as Thor sat down next to him.

“Have you continued working?”

“Yes, my King,” Loki replied quietly, and laid his head on Thor’s shoulder, tucking under the arm around his shoulders. “It will occupy Stephen and me for at least a month, if not longer.”

“I have been in contact with the Avengers. The Captain wants an update on your progress, and he will meet us tomorrow at the Sanctum. I assume this is acceptable.”

“Of course. I do not know how much information I can give him, however.”

Thor pulled Loki closer, so that he was nearly half in Thor’s lap. “He will be happy with whatever you give him, since it was more information than he had before. And if he is not, well…” Thor held up Mjolnir to demonstrate, and Loki surprised himself by laughing.

It took a moment, and then Thor joined him, the two of them laughing together on the small couch, and Thor pulled him closer, rough hand rubbing at the back of Loki’s neck.

“I have missed this,” Thor told him, his voice soft. “I have spent...decades trying to get back to this. Out of every century I have lived, out of every man I have met and known, you are the one I am most honored to have by my side.” He dropped Mjolnir onto the floor and held up his hand, lightning rolling between his fingers. “Loki...sometimes I feel ancient, and I am tired of being ancient. But I remember that you have lived those years beside me, and my soul feels settled. I could not look into the abyss of eternity that stretched on before me and spend those millennia without you.”

He pulled Loki up, so they were looking at each other. Loki felt a great cold fear roll down his back. “That is why I have done this, why I sent myself into this endless time. Because, brother, I know what happens. I know that Thanos wins, and I know that you can stop him.”

“Why did you kill me?”

“I did not kill you. I killed inferior copies of you.” Thor released Loki and he settled back down against Thor’s chest, pressing his own hand to his chest to feel his rapid, panicked heartbeat. “None of those copies were truly you. I wish I could show you...but I knew you were different from the beginning. I knew that my brother had finally come back to me.”

Loki swallowed and attempted to sit up, but Thor kept him trapped. “Will you tell me how many?”

“I lost count after the first hundred.”

He could not stop the tears that slid down his cheeks. “I have done...terrible things to you, in the past, Thor,” Loki rasped, “but I have never done anything as great and as terrible as this.”

“I told you,” Thor replied, his voice mild, “I will defeat Thanos by any means necessary, and I will keep you with me, no matter the obstacle.”

“What did you do to me?”

Thor sighed, and pushed Loki to the floor, grabbing a brush from the side table, and slowly smoothing out Loki’s hair. “Every version of you that came back was slightly different. I understand it to be a consequence of bringing back someone that was already dead. Some of you were...horrible. Spitting fire, throwing spells...even at your worst, you never treated me like that. Some of you were too tricky, attempting to kill me in my sleep, or poisoning the pages of books I was reading. A few of you took your own life before I could even tell you what I required of you.” Thor gave a shaky sigh and Loki squeezed his eyes shut.

“But you...you are what I remembered. You are the little brother I wanted back. Every morning I would wake up to a version of you I didn’t recognize. I woke up to someone that wasn’t _mine_. And then you...you knelt. You remembered. You remembered our time on the _Statesman_ , your hand in mine as you told me that whatever happened, you would be beside me. You promised your undying fidelity to me, and you came back with that same promise.”

Loki found himself envious of the other Loki’s, the ones with more anger and fire and heart in their souls. Instead, he kept to his place and stayed on his knees, as he had done for so many years. Whatever those other versions of him had had in them to rebel, to not stay the course, it had not been given to him this time. He was too aware of his place to do anything else. 

A servant knocked at the door and brought in a tray with various drinks laden on it; she put it on the side table closest to Thor and then quietly left, shutting the door behind herself. Thor took a glass and swallowed the entire drink down.

“I was close to losing hope, and you came to give it back to me. Norns, Loki, I missed you. But I have you back.”

“You’ve always been a possessive bastard,” Loki rasped, and Thor laughed loudly into the silence he left behind.

“You do remember! I told you, Odin gave you to me.” Thor separated Loki’s hair out into sections and began braiding it. “I see the way you and the witch look at each other. If you prove yourself to me, I’ll let you have him.”

It was no different than his childhood, where Thor would make him do humiliating things to get his books back, or his toys back, or get back whatever it was Thor had taken from him that day. Loki had once believed he could have any modicum of control over his life; Thor was quick to remind him otherwise. It was no different now than when they were children, except that Thor was far more powerful than he had been, and Loki had far more to lose. 

“Whatever you wish, my King,” Loki replied, and leaned his head back into Thor’s lap. Yes, he had seen the returning interest from Stephen, but genuinely hadn’t thought anything would come of it; he was too busy worrying over if he would wake up the next morning or not. But this gave him hope, even if he was to spend the rest of his life at Thor’s feet. One good memory in the muck of it all couldn’t be too much to ask for.

“He wants to sleep with you.” Thor brushed Loki’s hair back and continued braiding it. “I see it in his face as he watches you. And that cape of his likes you; from what I understand, it’s very testy, even for a bit of cloth. I am glad you lived long enough for this to happen; I hope I do not have to watch it again. You know how I prefer your attention to be on me.”

“I’m allowed to look,” Loki shot back, baring his teeth as Thor yanked on his hair.

“Remember your place. And yes, you’re allowed to look. But you remember only I’m allowed to give permission.”

Loki remembered. On one occasion, when he was nearly 600, a visiting delegate’s son from Vanir had taken an interest in him, and he had taken an interest back. The boy had gone missing after Thor had found them in an awkward embrace, and had shown up at a dinner a few nights later, amnesiac and with the bones in his hands and arms broken. He remembered very well.

He had slept with others over the years, usually on some desperate jaunt away from Thor, and it was generally to gain something for himself. He enjoyed sex, but it wasn’t important to him. It was more a tool of manipulation, or something he used in a bid for attention, from Thor or otherwise.

“You never did like me having any freedom,” Loki mused, and Thor laughed.

“You’re allowed your freedom.”

“All the freedom of a mutt on a chain.”

Thor laughed again. “I always liked your funny analogies, brother. I am glad you still see the real me.”

Loki was generally content with his life being the way it was, but often he would watch his brother with others and bite his tongue at the raging jealousy coursing up in his gut. Nobody else was pushed to the floor over and over again until it was not worth the effort to even try to stand. Nobody else was held to the floor by Mjolnir for hours as Thor attended a party in the next room. Nobody else looked into Thor’s eyes and saw the storm behind the blue sky.

When he was younger, he had felt honored to see a side of Thor that others never saw. As he grew older, he realized that he was the only one, that everyone else knew a different Thor than he did. He realized it was something special, yes, to know Thor differently than anyone else did, but because it was something special did not mean it was something good. By the time he realized it, he was in too deep. Thor was already in his soul. They were already too twisted together.

Slowly, his racing mind began to settle, and Loki sighed, sliding off his boots and the leather covering he had worn over his tunic. Thor unbuckled his cape and pulled it away from him, strong fingers massaging the back of Loki’s neck.

“I am at your side, brother,” he told Thor, “as I have always been.”

“That is all I ever wanted to hear,” Thor told him, and handed Loki a drink from the tray the servant had brought in, and he cradled it in trembling hands, taking small sips as they watched the light disappear over the horizon.


	5. CH5

The Bifrost landed them in the foyer of the Sanctum, and Stephen and Wong greeted them both. Stephen squeezed Loki’s arm and nodded to Thor while Wong asked about their trip. Loki floated a chest up the stairs and the four of them followed behind it.

“How much were you able to find?” Stephen asked.

“The Asgardian library has thousands of books. I attempted to read all of them a few hundred years ago, and read nearly half of it before I had to give up. It took me almost a hundred years, at approximately a book a day.” Loki set the chest down and opened the trunk. It was full of shrunken books, and as he picked one up, it enlarged back to its regular size. “The chest is enchanted. If you remove a book, it will return to its normal size. If you put it back in, it will shrink to fit.”

“Our seidrmadrs are very talented,” Thor told them, and both Stephen and Wong experimented with various books, the two of them laughing quietly. Thor pulled Loki aside and told him he was going to go pick up Captain America, and he quickly left.

“Why did you stop reading through the library?” Stephen asked, once Thor was gone. Wong went back to doing his own research, leaving the two of them alone.

Loki tossed his hair over his shoulder. “A great many of the books are duplicates, or copies written in another language. I have the Allspeak and can understand any language, but some of them are more difficult and not worth the time. I am very intelligent, of course, but with a lifetime as long as mine...you forget more information than you learn.” 

“I have a photographic memory. I haven’t forgotten anything I have ever read.”

“That sounds terrible,” Loki told him, and Stephen looked up. 

“People are usually jealous,” Stephen mused.

Loki tapped his chest, turning his long sleeved tunic into a tank top. He held out his arm to Stephen, and pressed his fingers to a few different places on his arms. Various words lit up in green, stark on his pale skin.

“If I have something I know I should not forget, I carry it with me,” Loki told him. Stephen came around the chest to look down on Loki’s arm. “I cannot imagine what it would be like to close my eyes and see everything I have ever read.”

“I don’t know anything else,” Stephen told him, and looked up from his arm. “Frigga?”

“My mother.” Loki touched another place on his arm, and another letter from her turned green. Ah, this one was one of his favorites—Thor and Odin had gone to Alfheim for nearly a decade, and she had gone with him for a year. She wrote him a long, flowery letter about how she was proud of him, how Thor had grown on his journey, how they were all becoming more powerful and more worldly. It ended with _Always your mother, Frigga._

“She reminds me of you.”

“She taught me many things. You would like her, I believe. Pity you were not able to talk to her when you visited Asgard.”

“Perhaps I will go back soon.”

Stephen looked up from Loki’s arm and suddenly, the air was tight between them, and Loki felt his cheeks flush. Long fingers slipped up his arm to his shoulder, and then a shaking thumb tilted Loki’s chin up. 

In the same way that being in the Sanctum somehow felt more familiar to him than the realm he had grown up in, kissing Stephen Strange felt as if Loki had stepped home. It was only a quick press of lips to lips, and Stephen quickly pulled away, the concern in his eyes fighting with the smirk on his lips.

“We will do that again,” Loki told him, “but my brother will be back soon.”

Stephen smiled at him and for a minute, Midgard felt as if it was a good place to live. Loki busied himself with changing his tank top back to his usual dark tunic, and Stephen pulled a few more books out of the trunk, examining them.

They were talking about the differences in Asgardian paper and Migardian paper when Thor and Captain America returned. The Captain looked tired, and it was strange for Loki to see him in jeans and a plain t-shirt, with a sweater over it. 

“Captain,” Loki greeted, and the Captain waved uncomfortably at him.

“You can call me Steve,” he said, and looked around the Sanctum. “Thor tells me you’ve been busy.” He nodded at Stephen and then took a chair at the nearest table, Thor taking the seat next to him. 

“It is difficult to know exactly what Thanos’s plans are, or how powerful he is currently. But we were given trusted word that Thanos has the Reality Stone.” Loki sat across the table from Steve and Thor, and Stephen took the seat next to him, their knees touching underneath the table. 

Loki waved his hand, and a small black notebook appeared in his hand. He opened it and laid it out on the table. He tapped the pages in front of him with his finger, and Steve leaned forward, looking interested. “There is no written location of any of the Infinity Stones, for good reason. It is mostly myth, or rumor, or tales passed along. But my research indicates that the Power Stone is on a planet called Xandar. Even with the Bifrost, it would take months to reach it, given that I do not know exactly where this planet is, and it is certainly beyond the sight of Heimdall.” 

He took a deep breath. “The Soul Stone is an entirely different matter. It has been in the same location for a very long time.”

“Odin said the location was lost?” Thor asked.

“No, brother. The Soul Stone is on a planet called Vormir. It is a barren place, inhabited only by the keeper of the Soul Stone.” He looked to Steve, but decided against mentioning his past with the current Keeper. Even he could put his diplomatic training to use.

“Then why did Odin—”

“I assume he did not want us to go looking for it, or he truly forgot where it is, or he never learned of its location,” Loki interrupted sharply, turning his attention back to Thor. “My research indicates that a great sacrifice has to be made in order for the Soul Stone. A very dear cost. Whatever is close to Thanos will have to be sacrificed. But I do not know what exactly.”

Everyone around the table nodded slowly, and Steve met Loki’s gaze. “What else?”

“Thanos is many thousands of years old. He attempted a previous rise to power many millennia ago, and was defeated.” He held up a finger to stop Steve’s questions, and continued on. “Thanos’s home world is called Titan. It is an empty planet now, but it was teeming with life long ago. In desire to please Death, he and his army slaughtered half of Titan, in order to save them from famine or pestilence or war. The reason changes with every myth, but it is relatively unimportant. He found that Death was not only displeased at his actions, but furious. In his rage, he attempted to kill Death.

“Instead, Death brought forward the monster Kronos, who slaughtered Thanos’s army and nearly killed him. He was left on an empty planet to die; Death figured that would be punishment enough, for Thanos to starve to death, or for a passing meteor to kill him. An act of fate or chance.” Loki looked back down at his notebook and tapped the page again. An apparition of Thanos, as Loki remembered him, jumped up from the page. He was a monster. Loki could barely stomach to look it; he remembered that massive hand, squeezing ever tighter around his neck.

Thor snarled, but stopped himself.

“He lived. They say he has a mutated gene that makes him even more powerful than an ordinary Titan. He grew back to power, slowly, and over a great amount of time. And he kept to a very far edge of the universe, and kept quiet as he regrew his army. Sometime in those years, he learned of the Infinity Stones. And he began hunting for them. While doing that, he and his armies went from planet to planet, and destroyed half of all life on them.”

“What the fuck,” Steve breathed, and Thor snorted in agreement. Loki collapsed the apparition of Thanos, unable to look at it for too long. 

“We did not hear of him until recently. I fell into the Void beneath the Bifrost, and fell, and fell, until Thanos plucked me out. It was the first I had heard of him. He was...unkind to me.” Under the table, Stephen put his hand on Loki’s thigh. Loki put his free hand on top of Stephen’s for a long moment, before bringing it back up and setting it on the table in front of him. 

“Very unkind. But he gave me a choice—my life, or Infinity Stones. I would invade Midgard with the aid of the Chitauri and the Other, and I would give him the Tesseract. I was given the choice, and I chose to live.” He met Steve’s gaze. 

Thor held up his hand before Loki could continue. “I have never asked this because it did not occur to me before now. Did you see anyone before Thanos found you?”

He looked down at his hands, spread out on the table in front of them, barely touching the edges of his notebook. He could feel all three of their gazes on them, and Stephen’s warm hand on his thigh. He wanted to run. 

“There are dark things out in the world, brother,” Loki finally replied, his voice no more than a whisper. “Monsters worse than Thanos. Worse than anything you can imagine.” He looked up and looked past the concern in Thor’s eyes to see the rising storm behind it. “I looked monsters in the face and managed to survive. I used every measure of canning and cunning I had, and I ended up in front of Thanos anyway. He saved me, and sent me into a far worse fate.”

Steve sat back in his chair and shook his head. “What did he do to you?”

“There are not words for it. I have experienced a great deal of pain in my long life, Captain. But what Thanos is capable of...there is not a name for it. It was beyond pain, beyond time. I take full responsibility for my actions upon your realm, do not see this as me attempting to excuse that. But Thanos can contort any love in your heart to hate, and make you thank him for it.”

“I can see why they call you Silver-tongue,” Steve mused, and turned his head to look at Thor. “Is he telling the truth?”

Thor shrugged. “He knows the consequences if he lies. I doubt it would be worth it.” His eyes dropped knowingly to where Stephen’s hand was still grasping Loki’s thigh, and Loki nodded in agreement.

“There is no precedence for my honesty, but I have nothing to gain by lying. I do however, have a great deal to gain if I tell you the truth.”

“What is that exactly?”

“Your help. I have a fear that the Avengers do not truly understand the depths of terror that Thanos will bring to Midgard. I was not exaggerating when I said he would ruin everything good in your lives. He takes, and he takes, and he takes, until there is nothing left to give, and then he takes the rest anyway.”

“Perhaps it is time we told Steve the truth,” Stephen offered.

Thor took a few moments to think about it, and then nodded. “He would learn it in due time anyway, and I consider Steven to be a close and dear friend.” He sat back in his chair and began the story when Loki balked. He refused to tell anyone of how many times he, or other versions of him, had failed, how many times Thor had torn him to pieces.

“While I do have visions in my dreams, the prophecy of Thanos was never something I saw. I lived through it, and I lived through Thanos finding all of the Infinity Stones. I also lived through Thanos killing my brother, and nearly all of Asgard.”

Steve looked from Thor and Loki and back again. Thor stayed his questions with a hearty pat on his shoulder. 

“We called it the Decimation. There were other names for it, but that was the most common. I watched as everyone dear to anyone else vanished, and turned to dust. Your friends? Gone. The only survivors were you, myself, Tony Stark, one of the Guardians of the Galaxy, the Widow, Bruce Banner, and the War Machine. There were other survivors, but you have not met them yet. Same with those that were turned to dust—some of them you have not met, but you will, and their loss was felt very dearly.

“We spent years attempting to just _find_ Thanos, but he hid himself from all sight. We got close a few times, but he was always ten steps ahead of us. We attempted to trap him, and he mocked us. We could not even get close enough to see him, let alone harm or kill him. The entire time, I knew...I knew that if only Loki had survived, he could help. He was the key. I _knew that_ , knew it deeper than my bones and my soul. I attempted to bring him back to life, but he had been dead for far too long; while our souls were intertwined in life, his had already left mine.”

Loki dropped his hand down to cover Stephen’s, and he intertwined their fingers.

“Seidr is very specific and particular. It requires a like act for a like act. I could not just bring Loki back to life; I had to go back with him. The seidr required to bring Loki back, in any time, was unfathomably difficult. But, I had been raised alongside one of the greatest seidrmadrs of our time, and I had picked up a thing or two, while being somewhat powerful on my own. I found a spell in these very walls that would allow me bring my brother back to me, but only to a specific point in time. I modified the spell so that it would let me go back to a few specific times, and that it would let me try over and over again until I got it right. I was also able to speed up certain events in this time.” Interesting. That must have been why his prison time felt so short, and how Thor managed to live through those years every time.

“How many times?” Steve asked, looking between Loki and Thor with a horrified look on his face. 

“I do not have an answer. But I feel that everything has led up to this, and the Loki that was finally given to me after all these attempts is the one we need to defeat Thanos.”

“Whatever magic was put upon me, it...changed something about who I was after I fell from the Bifrost. I remember it, but I do not feel the effects as I remember I did.”

“That explains a great deal,” Thor replied. “Some of you were very traumatized, and nothing I could do helped.”

He wanted to ask how Thor had been able to kill versions of him that were no better than begging messes on the floor, and he remembered the Thor that had held him against the bathroom wall his first night out of the prison cell. Loki was sure it had been difficult, but Thor would’ve seen no other option. Loki wondered if tears had ever been shed over the versions of him Thor had struck down. He wondered the various ways that Thor had done it.

He knew he shouldn’t be thinking of such things.

Thor continued with his recollection, “I spent months researching the spell, making sure I had everything right. I express my condolences, Steven; I left that timeline without so much as a goodbye. I do not know what came to pass in that world, or if it ceased to exist after I left, but I can only imagine how difficult my disappearance was on you and the other Avengers. However, I had no other option. 

“I was very excited at the beginning, and that excitement slowly turned to rage, as Loki here can attest. It took a very long time for me to feel hope again, and now I truly believe that defeating Thanos is possible, even if he does have an Infinity Stone or two. We are powerful enough with my brother.”

“Just how strong are you, Loki?” Steve asked.

“I do not need the Reality Stone to make you question your reality,” Loki replied, smugly, and waved his free hand and watched the world change around them. 

The glamour he threw was simple, but he watched as all three men around him jumped to their feet, convinced they were suddenly standing on a rock floating through space, even Thor, who had long been at least somewhat savvy to his tricks. It took Stephen a minute or two to get his bearings, and he used his own seidr to dispel part of the glamour, and Loki smiled at him and pulled the rest of it away. 

“I cannot keep that spell up for very long, and as you can see, it is somewhat easy to destroy, but I have spells other than that one to set your mind on fire. I have no intention of using them, of course, but it is always good to know how to disable your enemies.”

Cautiously, the three of them slowly retook their seats, Steve looking at Loki with a new light in his eyes. “Dare I ask what else you can do?”

“How about this,” Loki replied, leaning forward over the table, “all you need to know is that I am capable of defeating Thanos, in this life or the next.”

“I believe you,” Steve told him, and he leaned forward to tap on Loki’s notebook. “What is this exactly?”

All four of them leaned forward as Loki opened the book to the next page. “I have some very specific skills in bonding magic to physical objects,” Loki told them, and he tapped his fingers on the open pages. 

Words danced above them, all of the information Loki had gathered so far on the Space Stone. He paged through the next few pages of the notebook, and information on the other Infinity Stones showed up above them.

“Can you make copies of this? I want to show this to the other Avengers,” Steve requested, and against his best judgement, Loki complied, making a complete copy of the relevant information in the notebook for Steve.

Captain America thanked them, and then took his leave soon after, saying he had a great deal to think about. 

“That was illuminating,” Loki said, tucking the notebook back into a seidr pocket. He took Stephen’s hand and stroked one of the long surgery scars with his thumb. “Thor?”

Thor looked at Loki and then smiled slightly at the grasp Loki had on Stephen’s hand. “I find myself glad that the various tragedies we have suffered can also bring us together.” He got up from the table and excused himself for the night, tossing Mjolnir in his hand as he did so. It was a threat, and a reminder, not an obvious one, but one that Loki recognized. He would have to follow soon, but he had a while alone with Stephen.

“You did not speak much,” Loki noted, turning to the witch. 

“I did not have many things to add, and I have found that listening can bring a great deal more information than speaking,” Stephen replied, looking down at their clasped hands. “I have always been a man of action, of great arrogance, but I see myself bested by you, and I find no shame in that.”

“I am far older than you, you know,” Loki said, and leaned in for a kiss.

The few romantic relationships that Loki had held in his life had been either decimated by Thor, or had been arranged by him, and then destroyed by his jealousy. Whatever Loki had outside of Thor was either strictly prohibited or Thor tore it to pieces. Which meant that the few relationships he had had that Thor was unaware of hadn’t been healthy, or they had been a means to an end. 

This was different. Thor was all the large parts of Loki’s life, whether Loki liked it or not, and he had always been the guiding force of Loki’s compass. He had always been the place to which Loki belonged, but he had never been _home_. Strange that he would find such a thing, hiding in a small pocket of Midgard.

They separated and Loki excused himself to bed, leaving Stephen behind at the table.

He joined Thor in bed and did not even protest the chain binding him to Mjolnir. He curled up on his brother’s chest and let the thunderous beat of Thor’s heart lull him to sleep.

* * *

The next day was busy, starting the research through the books they had brought from Asgard, but it was pleasant enough. Thor took a few books that Loki was fairly certain he had already read when they were younger, and spread them out over his own table, while Loki and Stephen sat next to each other and shared a cup of coffee. 

It was as if Loki had been allowed to step briefly into someone else’s life, a life that was comfortable and was steeped in routine. Loki had never considered the possibility of his life being like that; he knew what he was in for. But he would take what he could get, and he curled up next to Stephen while they ate lunch and stole bits of food from the witch’s plate. Thor ended up budging up on the couch next to them, and Loki curled up against his brother’s side and swung his socked feet into Stephen’s lap, holding Stephen’s hand in his lap. The Cloak of Levitation settled across his legs and Loki enjoyed the quiet minutes of comfort.

As the days and weeks passed and they slowly went through the books from Asgard, Loki’s life grew quiet and uncomplicated. He fell victim to routine, spending his days with Stephen and his nights with Thor. He and Stephen grew closer, even spending an hour or two a night watching the strange box that Stephen called a TV, and Loki got to know the lines of the witch beneath his clothes, much to his amusement and satisfaction. 

Thor calmed even more as their research grew more involved, allowing Loki even more freedom. Loki slept regularly on the cot at the end of Thor’s bed, and often, Thor spent the night in Asgard or at the Avengers Facility. 

One night, Stephen invited Loki to his bed, and Thor gave Loki somewhat reluctant permission, and then spent the night away from the Sanctum.

Loki kept careful not to push his luck, however. Thor had quieted, but he was still a threat to Loki’s life, and even Loki could not deny his allegiance to his King. He was cautious, feeling as if he was wavering on the edge of a precipice, but he was careful not to allow Thor or Stephen to accidentally drop him over the edge. Thor came first, always. Even his enjoyment in Stephen’s bed could not take that from him. 

One morning, he woke up to see that Thor was sitting on the floor next to his cot, a bottle of some Asgardian alcohol in his hand. “Thor?” he rasped, sitting up and rubbing the sleep out of his eyes.

Thor reached back with one meaty hand and pulled Loki to the floor, yanking his blankets down on top of him. Loki sprawled half in Thor’s lap for a moment, before he stretched and then curled up against Thor’s chest, ignoring the reek of alcohol.

“Brother?” he finally questioned again after a long silence. 

“Today marks five full years since I brought you back,” Thor told him, tears in his voice. “You have made it so far...so much further than I once believed possible. None of the others made it as far as you, not even close. Some of them never even made it through their imprisonment, or even _to_ the imprisonment. I...I missed you so much, Loki. More than you could understand. But I believe you are here now, that you have come back home to me. I finally have you again.”

Thor took another swallow of the alcohol and finished half that was left in the bottle. 

“Thank you for coming back to me,” Thor said, and wept into Loki’s hair, curling his body around Loki’s. 

“I will always come back to you, brother,” Loki promised. 

They stayed on the floor well through the afternoon, only getting up when Thor had finished his alcohol and needed more. Loki was still in his sleep clothes—a long-sleeved black shirt that Thor had stretched out and went down to mid-thigh on Loki—when he exited the room and found Stephen at the closest table to Thor’s bedroom, pretending to read. 

Stephen looked up at him and Loki watched as his high cheekbones turned bright pink, and Stephen dropped his gaze back to his book. “Rough morning?” Stephen asked, his voice rough. 

“Thor,” he said by way of an explanation, with a wave of his hand. “Do you have any more alcohol?”

Stephen nodded and led him to the kitchen, and he pulled two bottles out from under the sink. “Hopefully this does the trick,” he said, and followed Loki back to Thor’s bedroom, where the thunder God was singing loud Asgardian war chants, his feet up on the bed and his back on the floor.

Loki knelt next to Thor and handed him an open bottle of alcohol. Thor spilled half the bottle on himself as he tried to drink it, and Loki quickly followed Stephen out of the room. He curled up on the couch in front of Stephen’s TV and took the mug of tea Stephen gave him, and curled up next to the witch. The Cloak of Levitation settled over the both of them, and Loki tucked his head under Stephen’s chin, sliding his hand down to hold onto one of Stephen’s.

It was his first day off in as long as he could remember, and while he felt the press of fate drawing ever closer and ever heavier, he ignored it, and spent the rest of the afternoon cuddling with his...partner, or whatever they were.


	6. CH6

Loki wasn’t necessarily looking for a huge breakthrough, or a page in some book that said, _‘Maniac has all of the Infinity Stones and can’t be killed? Here’s 5 tips and tricks for beating him!’_ , but he wanted something, some sentence that could show him that there was hope. Instead, every book lead to a book that he had already read, or it was the same information he had already read a dozen times. He was getting nowhere. Months and months of research leading to the same things he had read in the beginning.

He and Stephen were both on their last books from the few hundred that Loki had brought from Asgard, and they had both slowed down in reading during the day. Loki would have to go back to Asgard for a week at minimum, and neither of them wanted to look that week in the face and live through it. 

Thor had dealt with his hangover from his drinking the day before by having Loki spell it away, and he was packing away the books they had already read, telling Loki about the adventures they could have back in Asgard. He had some designs on talking to Odin about returning the Casket of Ancient Winters to Jotunheim, which got Loki’s attention.

“He won’t return it,” Loki told him. 

“Jotunheim?” Stephen asked, looking up from his book. He had grown used to ignoring the conversations between Thor and Loki, as they generally involved a great deal of either a language he didn’t understand, or politics of a world he had only briefly visited. “Is that a part of the race you said you were a part of?”

Loki turned to him and nodded, keeping his face blank. “Jotunheim is the home of the Jotnar, a race of Frost Giants. From the little information I have been able to glean from Odin and my mother, I was abandoned as an infant, and Odin found me and stole me away to Asgard instead of letting me die. I only half believe that, of course; I have my suspicions that Odin stole me away from my birth parents as political leverage, instead of finding me left in a temple or whatever manner of nonsense he cooked up. But, of course, there’s no way to prove anything. But yes, I am Jotun.”

Looking between Loki and Thor, Stephen lowly asked, “May I see? You denied last time, which I still accept, but I am curious.”

Loki thought about it. He had figured out a way around Odin’s spell soon after he had found out about its existence, and Thor wasn’t shouting him down, and Mjolnir had been left in Thor’s bedroom. He questioned his brother, who shrugged. “Very well,” he told Stephen, and stood up to pull off his doublet and tunic, changing his pants into shorts. At Stephen’s curious look, he explained, “In my Jotun form, this temperature will be sweltering.”

The seidr was a bit difficult to peel off; it felt as if he was removing too-tight combat gear as it fluttered to the ground. He would need to pick it back up and paste it back on, but that was easy enough to do; the spell had been connected to his body for so long that it wasn’t partial on going anywhere, not unless Loki didn’t pick it up after a very long time. 

He looked down to watch blue spread up his arms as if it was the curse, and not his Aesir skin. The room immediately felt too warm, and he blinked a few times, a different manner of vision slowly shuttering in. Colors were suddenly far brighter, and if he concentrated, he could see the thermal imaging of the people around him. His sense of smell changed, and Thor smelled like petrichor and sharp ozone.

Stephen smelled almost like seidr and a loud snap of sugar, somewhat similar to Loki’s favorite type of mead. Wong was in the kitchen, but his scent was all around the Sanctum, and Loki could pick up traces of it, a different brand of seidr than Stephen, along with old books and strangely enough, apples.

He took a sip of tea and it felt strangely sour on his tongue. He set the cup down and held his hands out before him. Revulsion and admiration flooded him in equal parts; a lifetime of cultural racism taught him still to hate the sight of his own skin, but he could see the strength of this form, the heritage marks strong on his pale blue skin.

Loki had never really let himself think about it, but Odin had caused him a horrible disservice; everything that was natural and normal about him and his form had been changed. Nothing he experienced was how his body was meant to live. 

He looked up to see Stephen on fire.

The information that the Asgard library held on Jotun was biased at best, and incomplete as worst. Most books talked about how Jotun were unruly beasts that had to be tamed, and nothing about their complex social structures or the differing body anatomy they held to Aesir. Even after Loki had learned of his true heritage, he had lost his entire species history. He had collected various books on Jontar from other realms to keep in his own library, but most of them were cobbled together references from a realm that had shut itself off long ago. He knew so little of himself and the people he had come from.

He didn’t know how his Jotun form could see the heat signature of any living creature around him, but it was surely interesting enough to see the blood rush into Stephen’s face and groin at his new visage. Thor had no real reaction that Loki could see, but he still got up from his table and came closer, looking fairly curious about Loki’s form.

Stephen got out of his seat and came closer, but Loki stepped away from him. “I know that if an Asgardian touches me, it causes them great harm. I can only imagine that it is a similar result for a Midgardian.”

“Loki,” Thor rasped, and he came close enough that Loki could feel the heat wafting off his skin. “I have never seen you in this form before.”

Loki looked up at him. “Surely you knew.”

“Of course I knew,” Thor replied. “Father told me after your…fall. Can you put a spell on your skin? To cause it not to harm anyone.”

His seidr felt different in this form, colder and harder. It didn’t flow through his fingers like cold water; it was more like jagged ice. He shook his head. “I have to practice before I can perform sedir as advanced as that.” He picked the cast-off seidr from the floor and slid back into it like a comfortable old suit, watching as his pale skin slipped up his arms and over his hands. It was immediately more freeing to be in his own skin, even as spelled as it was. Thor rested his hand on the nape of Loki’s neck and pulled him in close as Loki changed his shorts back into his pants and pulled on his doublet and tunic, pulling his sleeves down so they covered his hands.

They ended up finishing their books and as they were cleaning up, Thor went to the kitchen help Wong, or harass him. He had told Loki they would be leaving in the morning, and Loki couldn’t drag any more time on Midgard out of him. Thor was doing his best to leave Loki and Stephen alone, Loki could tell, but he knew Thor wouldn’t be able to stay out of it for long. But for now, they had time, what little of it they could grab.

They finished putting the last of the books back in the trunk, and then they went into the TV room, curling up together on the couch. Loki leaned his head back against the arm Stephen put across his shoulders, and held one of Stephen’s shaking hands in his own as the TV quietly told them about some strange Midgardian animals in some other part of the realm. 

“There is something interesting about my Jotun form,” Loki said a little while later, after Thor had obtrusively walked by the doorway for the third time. “I can see the thermal imaging of any creature around me.” Stephen stiffened and attempted to pull away, but Loki turned and slid around him like a snake, leaning across Stephen’s lap and entwining his arms around Stephen’s neck. 

“My dear,” he purred, and he watched as Stephen’s hands fluttered uncomfortably in the air for a moment before resting uncomfortably on Loki’s shoulder and knee. “I saw that you had a very...visceral reaction to my natural form. Of course, I would only assume you have a similar reaction to my Aesir form, as I am a lovely specimen, but I only just now had proof.” He leaned forward and smiled against Stephen’s mouth. “I appreciate your…appreciation for my form, Stephen.”

Their mouths met and Stephen’s weak hands slipped down to tuck under Loki’s tunic, his long fingers gently smoothing across Loki’s skin. Stars sparked across Loki’s eyes as he closed them, and then he pulled back, sliding one of his hands into Stephen’s short hair, examining how it felt against his fingers. 

“Did you know, that on Asgard, we only cut our hair in times of dishonor? It is practiced more commonly against nobility, and some of the civilians have taken to the practice of keeping their hair shorn, but I prefer my hair long.” He leaned his head into the hand that Stephen rested against his hair, and met Stephen’s heated gaze. “Thor told me of how, in the life that I died in, he had his hair cut away on a planet called Sakaar. A few hundred years ago, he would have killed anyone who touched his hair.”

“Father had a law that anyone who touched a member of the royal family was immediately put into the dungeons, or killed, but he rescinded that law a few hundred years after we were born,” Thor interjected from the doorway, and he waved his hand when Loki went to remove himself from Stephen’s lap. “Stay where you are comfortable, brother.” He came into the room and perched on the end of the couch, dropping one hand onto Loki’s bare ankle. “When I am King, that law will be reinstated for you, my brother.”

Stephen’s hands fell away from Loki and he quickly put his gloves back on.

“As you wish, my King,” Loki told him, and leaned back against the arm of the couch, keeping his arm around Stephen’s neck, kicking his feet out to rest them in Thor’s lap, where Thor began massaging them. “Why did he revoke the law?” Loki questioned, tipping his head back to look up at the ceiling.

Thor chuckled, his voice as deep and as dangerous as a thunderstorm. “I have had a great many trysts with the citizens of our fair realm. Father thought it prudent to take away the law, rather than imprison half the population near my age.”

Understandable. Loki had never kept an exact track of how many people Thor had slept with, but he remembered being only a few hundred years old and taking a perverse pleasure in that Thor always returned to him, no matter how many people he stuck his cock in. And then, of course, realization had dawned, horrifying in its intensity, so many years later, but that memory of smugness had never left him. He was always someone to gloat in having something no one else had, regardless of the consequences.

A trembling gloved hand rested on his throat, and Loki looked down to see Stephen gazing at him, an unreadable expression on his face. He couldn’t tell if it was pity or lust, but he rather hoped for the latter.

“You seem to have calmed down on that in the recent centuries,” Loki noted, keeping his eyes on Stephen. 

“I have found everything I wanted, without realizing I was searching for it,” Thor said, and he rubbed his thumb over Loki’s ankle for a few moments before removing Loki’s feet from his lap and excusing himself. Loki shimmied down the couch until his head was in Stephen’s lap, and he closed his eyes as Stephen’s shaking hands pet through his hair. 

“You never did tell me how you damaged your hands,” Loki mused, watching the silent TV.

“It was a car accident,” Stephen told him. “I was…distracted. I drove off the road and my hands went through the dashboard. The surgery afterwards...I have permanent nerve damage.”

“Ah,” Loki replied. “A car?” 

Stephen laughed at him. “It’s a vehicle. Means of transportation. It can carry anywhere from one to, say, eight or nine people, over land on roads. I had a few very expensive ones.” He shook his head. “I always did like spending money.”

Loki tapped his chin with his finger. Asgard had similar sounding means of conveyance, great beautiful seidr-powered machines called _vagn_. They were autonomous and were different than actual spaceships in that they could not leave Asgard. “Do you have any of these cars around? I would like to see one.”

Stephen nudged him off the couch and led Loki through the library and down the front steps, and after they both looked around for Thor, Stephen used his seidr to open the front doors. At Loki’s questioning look, Stephen explained that because of the damage to his hands, he couldn’t operate a door knob. Or much of anything, really. Interesting.

Loki looked out into the city he had long ago attempted to destroy. It felt like a buried memory, something that had happened to someone else. He couldn’t see much of it, only the peculiar vagns that Stephen had called cars, tall buildings, the ugly, useless humans. He was almost curious enough to ask how the cars operated, but insofar Stephen was the only Midgardian worthy enough of Loki’s interest. He would help the Avengers, given that they were helping him and Thor defeat Thanos, but they were useless to him beyond that.

The two of them stood in the doorway for a while longer, just watching the bustle of the city. “Is there some manner of glamour over this building?” Loki asked, curious as to why none of the Midgardians had even glanced at the two of them. He had assumed to be recognized soon, although he wasn’t looking forward to it.

“Given the amount of valuable history of the mystic arts in this building, along with the priceless artifacts, a previous Master of the Sanctum cast a spell that no one could see inside, unless they already knew what was here.”

Loki smiled at the oblivious humans and then turned back to look up the stairs. “I’ve done similar things to Thor,” he told Stephen, and tucked his hand into Stephen’s elbow as they went back upstairs, the door quietly shutting behind them. “He spent six months going from healer to healer because he couldn’t read, given that I had spelled his schooling books with a similar spell. Our mother was the one to figure it out.”

“Were you punished?”

Loki shrugged. “Most likely.” He flipped his hair over his shoulder and followed Stephen to his room, watching with hooded eyes as Stephen laid the Cloak of Levitation on his bed and changed into his pyjamas. He could hear Thor and Wong talking in the kitchen, but ignored them as he flicked his hand and his own clothes changed into a tight fighting pair of knee-length black shorts, and a black tank top with spaghetti straps. 

He slid into bed and leaned his head back against Stephen’s pillows, running his hands over the Cloak of Levitation as it shimmered up the bed and curled around his shoulders. Stephen came back from the bathroom and stood next to the bed for a moment before joining Loki, sliding one of his shaking hands under Loki’s shirt and resting it on his stomach. 

“Do you want to get away from him? Couldn’t you run?”

Loki laughed out loud, and he could hear the mockery in his own voice. “As I have said, my fealty is to my brother. I will take whatever he gives me, regardless of how kind he is in giving it. I do not know how loyalty works on Midgard, but on Asgard, it is bound to our very souls.” He entwined his fingers with the hand on his stomach. “My dear, we are very different beings than you. Your species does not have seidr as we Aesir do, so you could not understand how it binds you to others.”

“Give me an example,” Stephen prompted, and rucked Loki’s shirt up. 

“Our souls have always been bound, Thor’s and mine,” Loki gasped, arching up into the warm mouth tracing over his nipples. “He is the light to my dark, he is my King.” He pulled Stephen’s head up and melded their mouths, biting at his lips and exploring his tongue with his own. “I belong to him.”

Stephen pulled back and held Loki’s head down to the pillow by his hair. “I have always been envious of what others had,” he told the God of Mischief, who smiled nastily up at him. “And I always got what I wanted.”

They came together, pale skin to pale skin, orange sparks meeting green flame, and as Stephen slid inside of him, Loki gasped and thought about how he enjoyed being owned. It was a good thing, to belong, even if it was temporarily to two people. He knew his place, and he was happy to stay there.

* * *

“Brother!” Thor thundered and clapped Loki on the back, pulling him closer and grinning at the bite marks on Loki’s neck. Loki had curled together with the witch after their love-making, and then he had heard Thor pacing back and forth outside the bedroom. Dutifully, he had gone to his brother, clad in one of Stephen’s sleep shirts, semen sliding down his thighs. “We must return to Asgard.”

“As you wish,” Loki told him, tipping his head back. “I was hoping to take more pleasure from the Midgard seidrmadr, but I will tell him I am taking my leave.”

Thor stepped closer, pushing Loki against the wall with his body. “You always did like being dirty,” he mused, and kicked Loki’s knees apart. “Is this a distraction? Are you losing sight of your goal? Must I take the witch’s eyes so that his gaze no longer strays to you?”

“As you wish,” Loki repeated, meeting Thor’s darkening gaze. “You know I would prefer him unharmed, and you know I care for him. But you may do as you wish.”

Rough fingers stroked over the marks on Loki’s neck. “I do not need your permission, Loki.”

“Of course not, my King. I am only ever at your service.”

Thor leaned in close. “His life is a mere blink in the life we have shared together. He will live, what, another forty years? That is a breath compared to the amount of time you have belonged to me.” He rubbed Loki’s hair in between his fingers, and Loki’s knees trembled. “How does this human mean something to you, when you tried to subjugate the rest of the species? He should be less than dust to you.”

“I am not one to associate myself with lesser life forms, but there are those worthy even amongst the beings of this realm. Stephen is one of the few.”

“He pleases you?”

Loki dipped a few fingers behind himself and brought up a fingerful of drying, tacky semen. “A great deal of pleasure, brother,” he told Thor, and then licked it off his finger. Thor growled at him but didn’t move. “Are we leaving now?”

“You can have a few more hours with the witch. But we leave at first light.”

“Of course, my King.” 

Thor released him and stormed back to his room, leaving Loki to carelessly saunter back to Stephen’s bed, where he was greeted with a warm mouth and weak, grasping hands. Stephen pressed him down to the bed, bracketing his head with his knees, choking him, leaning forward to press Loki’s hands to the mattress as he gagged on Stephen’s cock.

Loki’s hips jerked and he came all over himself as Stephen pulled back and jerked himself off over Loki’s face. Loki smirked at him and strained weakly against the hold on his wrists, gasping when Stephen held him down even more securely.

“Sadly, however,” Loki gasped through the burn in his throat, as Stephen weakly pumped his hips, his soft cock moving through the come on Loki’s face, “I must be returning to Asgard in only a few hours, and I do need my beauty sleep.”

Stephen moved back and then pulled Loki into his arms, a quick flash of seidr cleaning his face. “I will miss you,” he admitted. “A great deal.”

“I will wish I am back here, in your arms, in your bed, every moment I am gone,” Loki replied, dropping a hand to bring his own spend up to his tongue. Orange seidr flared around Stephen’s fingers and his suddenly strong fingers grabbed at Loki’s hips, and Stephen twisted him around, slamming his cock inside him. Loki gasped and then smiled darkly into the sheets that Stephen shoved his face into. “Do you plan on fucking me throughout the night?”

Stephen leaned over him. “I will do what I want with you.”

Loki’s grin only grew. It was good to belong, good to be used.

* * *

Thor dragged him away from Stephen before the sun was up, and Loki drowsily followed his brother into the shower, letting Thor roughly wash him free of Stephen’s touch and stench. Thor made him clean himself out, watching closely as Loki fingered himself to pull the semen out, and then he tapped his fingers against Loki’s neck, calling forward his own seidr to heal the bite marks and the ache.

Loki leaned against his brother, hiding his smile in Thor’s shoulder. “He marked me,” he noted. “You don’t like it when others mark me.”

“I should strike you down mark your entire body. Even the witch would know you do not belong to him, that you’re _mine_.”

It wasn’t a new threat, but it was something that a far younger Thor had told him about when they were lost out in a forest, after Thor had gotten jealous over some foreign representative giving eyes to Loki. He wanted lightning to strike Loki in the face so that everyone who looked at him would know who he belonged to, as if his actions and entire being didn’t make that obvious enough already. 

“Do you truly need to strike me down with your seidr to show that I am yours? I allowed you to collar me, brother. I may have taken another inside of me but he knows that I belong to you.”

Thor pulled away and watched closely as Loki washed his hair. “I want everyone who sees you to know that you are mine.”

“Are you saying a tattoo, brother? Your name across my forehead?”

Humming, Thor leaned around Loki to tip his own head under the showerhead. “I picked up a few books of my own from Asgard’s library,” he admitted. 

“My seidr and my soul already belongs to you,” Loki told him. “Can you not feel it?”

“It’s not enough,” Thor spat at him. “I can feel it, but I need more.”

As always, whatever Loki gave him wasn’t enough. It would never be enough. But he would do whatever it took to stay in his King’s good graces. He would be what Thor needed, even as it wore at him and bruised his knees and there was no way out.

“Tell me what you need from me, brother,” Loki told him, and rinsed out his hair and then followed Thor out of the shower. “Tell me what I can give you.”

Thor gave him a dark look and Loki dried himself off and then took the clothes he was handed, changing them to be more suitable. Thor’s style was so masculine, so imposing. Loki had once looked to mirror his brother, but now that he was accepting of his position in the world, he wanted to keep to the shadows, staying with his smooth lines and dark colors. He was always a fan of green, however. It brought out his eyes. He reminisced for a moment about the jewelry he had left in Asgard, casting a glance over his bare fingers and his bare neck.

Loki followed Thor from his bedroom and summoned the chest of books to him, allowing himself one glance back at Stephen, asleep in his bed. But he dutifully went into Thor’s arms as he shouted for Heimdall, and he shut his eyes as the Bifrost took them away.

Asgard was always a bit too warm for Loki in the summer, and he cast a cooling charm on himself as he followed Thor up the Bifrost to the palace. As it had been the last time, it did not feel as he was coming home, and Loki was suddenly homesick for the Sanctum, for Stephen.

Frigga met them in the front entryway of the palace, welcoming them with open arms and a warm hug and a kiss for Loki. She sent the floating trunk of books with a servant back to the library, and she led them to her private rooms.

Strangely enough, after a few servants had set the table and poured drinks for them, Frigga sent them away, watching her sons with solemn eyes. Thor took a long drink and put his hand on Loki’s knee, butting his shoulder in front of Loki’s, staring down his nose at their mother. Loki knew that if Thor felt they were threatened that he wouldn’t keep up the charade that he was from this time, that he would do whatever it took to keep Loki at his side.

“I have been weaving a great deal lately,” she finally told them, smiling at Thor’s overprotective behavior. “And I have seen some…interesting developments.” She met Loki’s gaze. “I am very happy for you, my son. The Midgard witch seems to be a very good match for you.” Thor grumbled and tightened his grasp on Loki’s knee. “I understand how your souls are wrapped together, my sons. Thor, please do not fret. You know your brother always comes back to you.”

“I do not want him to leave in the first place!” Thor barked out, and then dug his fingers into Loki’s thigh, breathing deep and forcing himself to stay calm.

Frigga smiled at them. “I have also seen other things in my loom. I have seen the way to defeat Thanos.”

As she explained what she had foretold to them, Loki could see the bright light on the horizon of his life bloom ever brighter in front of him, and he leaned into Thor’s side, feeling as if he had somehow been on the right path all along.

* * *

Loki spent nearly every waking hour of the next week in the library, spending his nights with Thor, curling up against his brother’s chest and nearly purring when Thor ran his hands through his hair. He took his meals kneeling at Thor’s feet, eating from Thor’s hands, dozing off with his head on Thor’s knee. He kept quiet, looking for any proof of Frigga’s claim.

It wasn’t obvious, but he found hints of it. He needed another set of eyes to help, and even as Thor hated to hear it, he needed Stephen. On their last day in Asgard, as Loki was collecting up the last of nearly two hundred books, Thor came up to him in the library.

“Do you remember when I told you I needed to mark you somehow? To show you that you belonged to me?”

“I already know I belong to you,” Loki told him, handing another pile of books to Thor for him to bring down to the book trunk. “But yes. Have you found a solution?”

“I want to brand you.”

Loki, much to his own credit, only froze for a moment. “Ah.”

“I was thinking a lightning bolt.” Thor dropped the books into the trunk and went back to Loki, tapping his fingers on the back of Loki’s neck. “Right here. You can keep it hidden behind your hair, or I can shave your head and you can wear it for everyone to see.”

“Or you can braid my hair and I will wear your brand proudly, without being dishonored to do so,” Loki offered in return, restraining the urge to run his fingers through his hair. Thor looked thoughtful and then sat down in the closest chair, Loki quickly going to his knees in front of him. 

Thor dropped his glamour, and showed Loki his own shorn hair, glaring down at him with his strange, mismatched eyes. He looked thoughtful for a moment and then replied, “Even if I did cut off your hair, you would only regrow it in a manner of minutes.” Loki nodded in agreement. “I also do not want to take your attention away from defeating Thanos, and finding the curse that Mother foretold in her weavings.” He nodded down at Loki and carded his fingers through Loki’s hair. “We will go to the woods tonight. I will make sure that even the witch knows you belong to me.”

_He does know,_ Loki wanted to say, but he refrained, only letting himself nod in acknowledgement, tucking his chin against Thor’s knee and closing his eyes. He had let Thor collar him, surely a brand was no step too far. He would do anything to keep Mjolnir from his skull, even this. He belonged to Thor, mind, body, and soul. His skin was Thor’s to mark as he wished. His soul was already bound to the man, what sacrifice was a bit of skin? Nothing he wasn’t willing to give up.

Rough fingers stroked over his neck and Loki gave into the exhaustion from the past few days, gave into missing Stephen, and he let himself sleep at Thor’s feet, comfortable in his place.

* * *

Thor had found a small clearing in the middle of the Asgard woods, far away from the palace or any of the cities or towns. Loki wrapped his dark green cloak around himself and went to his knees at Thor’s feet, closing his eyes at the raging storm above him.

He would do whatever it took to keep himself alive. He could not run. There was no escape from this. He was a god in his own right, and Thor was no more powerful than he, but Thor could call down the storm and the raging winds and the thunder and the calamitous lightning. Thor was a King. Thor was his King.

Loki opened his eyes and leaned his head back, looking up at his brother silhouetted against the storm in the sky. “My King,” he breathed, and briefly opened his mouth for the rain to pour in. The thunder grew ever louder, ever closer, and Loki went to his feet as Thor pulled him up. 

The lightning that struck him was bright and as painful as anything he had ever experienced, and Loki screamed, eyes open but unseeing, collapsing to the ground, shaking and snarling at the the gentle hand on his throat as Thor attempted to look at the mark on the back of his neck.

His body was on fire, strange shocks contorting his limbs, his muscles unresponsive, and it only took a few minutes for Thor to realize that something was very, very wrong, and suddenly, they were flying through the air, landing in the palace, and the last thing Loki heard was Thor’s cry for a healer.


	7. CH7

He awoke in a bed on Midgard. The air was different on Midgard, somehow less clean, just a bit harsher on his lungs. But he was more comfortable in the Sanctum than he was at home on Asgard, even as Midgard was a horrific place for someone as powerful and incredible as Loki. But Stephen was on Midgard, which made at least one place in the whole realm tolerable.

His neck was agony. His extremities ached. The sun coming in through the windows made his eyes hurt, and there was a painful headache thrumming behind his temples.

He gasped for Thor, and warm, rough hands cradled his jaw, and he squinted his eyes to see orange seidr flickering over him. He could feel Stephen close to him, and wanted to feel the human’s skin against his own, but Thor was too close, too powerful, his lightning rolling in gentle waves over Loki’s body.

He wanted to hear Thor’s voice, he wanted to hear Stephen’s voice, but there was only a thunder in his ears, and it grew higher and higher pitched until he fell back unconscious, a dark storm cloud above him.

* * *

His neck hurt, but he was able to sit up and press a hand to the strange scarring. It was deep and tree-like, roots of lightning all over his back and up into his hair, around the front of his neck and up over his jaw. His brother had truly claimed him, white scars against his pale skin. Two of the long arcing streaks met at the front of his neck, a truly fitting collar. He could never run now.

His eyes hurt, but he looked up to see that the room was empty. It was surely Stephen’s room on Midgard, and Loki relaxed against the pillows behind him. 

His strangled mind suddenly jumped forward—lightning. All they had to do was find Thanos, and they could incapacitate him with lightning, and Loki and Stephen could use their seidr to fully restrain him, and then Thor could kill him. Had that been what Frigga had foreseen, the three of them working together? Or did they need Wong, or even the rest of the Avengers?

Suddenly, Loki saw a future for himself, a future without Thanos looming over him. He saw himself living out Stephen’s life with him, however long that would take, and then returning to Thor’s side, following his brother as he became the Allfather, the Leader of the Nine Realms. He could see what was going to come to pass as clearly as he could see his own hands in front of himself. Thor had always been the one with the gift of prophecy, but Loki knew he was powerful enough for the Fates to align and show him that he was on the right path.

He felt the Fates leave him and he leaned back against the headboard, panting loudly. And then, he called for his brother.

He knew Thor was strong enough. All they had to do was find spells strong enough to incapacitate Thanos long enough for Thor to smash Mjolnir through his worthless skull. And they had to find spells to counteract the power of the Reality Stone, but that would be simple enough. A memory ticked at the back of his skull—something about lightning being able to interrupt the Reality Stone, but he could barely grasp it through the haze in his mind.

Rain pounded against the windows as Thor stormed into the room, climbing on the bed next to Loki, and then straddling Loki’s waist as he cradled Loki’s face in his hands. 

“My love,” Thor cried out, and cradled Loki’s head to his chest. “My dear brother, the light of my life. I brought you back to save your life, but I only continue to hurt you.”

“You can do whatever you wish to me,” Loki rasped, his voice as rough as a storm. 

“I am dearly sorry,” Thor told him, and leaned away from Loki, who looked up at him through tired eyes. Thor gave a rough chuckle and traced the threads of white lightning on Loki’s skin. “I cannot believe you would let me do this.”

“You own me,” Loki told him, and his eyes fluttered shut, and he laid back against the pillows, Stephen’s scent in his nose. “You can mark me however you wish. My body is yours.”

“You have never been more beautiful,” Thor breathed, and he traced the scars upon Loki’s skin. It was difficult to scar a God, even as Loki held more than his fair share of them. Most of them were from silly mistakes in their childhood, or other errands Odin had sent them on. But these were different, deliberate as they were. They were a brand, a mark of ownership. No one would look at him now and doubt that he belonged at Thor’s side. No one to doubt he belonged to Thor.

“Where is Stephen?”

“Meeting with the Avengers. I told him about Mother’s foretellings of our victory. He found it prudent enough to inform the rest of them.”

Loki managed to peel his eyes open enough to look up at his brother. “I know how to defeat him,” he told his brother, and then he was buried in warm flesh as Thor nearly strangled him in a hug.

He gaspingly explained his theories to Thor, who picked him up and brought him to the library, hitting a strange button on the way and calling for Stark.

A portal was created near them a few minutes later, and the Avengers came through, the Cloak of Levitation fluttering in front of them and then resting over Loki, hiding his nudity from the Avengers. Stephen came through the portal last, face brightening when he saw that Loki was awake, and he rushed to him, the two of them sharing a brief kiss.

Thor’s thunderous expression kept the Avengers from mentioning the kiss, but they didn’t refrain from asking Loki about his alleged theory of defeat and Frigga’s weavings. He managed enough seidr to cover himself, although he kept his fingers wrapped in the Cloak of Levitation, and Thor carried him to a settee, where Stephen joined him.

Stark asked a question about the Lichtenberg figure that was now disfiguring Loki’s skin, but everyone ignored him, even as Stephen’s gloved hand shakingly traced the two traces that collared Loki.

Finally, Thor pressed Loki to tell them, and he relented. He admitted he didn’t quite know of a spell, yet, and that Stephen’s seidr was so foreign to him, even after these many months, that he couldn’t figure out a spell for the witch to use, but now they had something specific to search for. Loki was remarkably powerful, and Stephen would only supplement him, and together, they could easily detain an incapacitated Thanos. And, of course, Thor would deliver the killing blow.

Thor tossed Mjolnir up in the air and then shook his head, waving the hammer around. “I do fear,” he told the stunned silent group, “that Mjolnir may not be powerful enough. I may need another weapon, one far more powerful.”

Even Loki was confused; he had not lived through Thor finding another weapon, nothing past wanting Thor to go to Nidavellir. His memories of the life he had already lived were hazy, but he could remember his death throes, his thoughts that if anyone could defeat Thanos, it was his brother, and he would need a weapon even more powerful than Mjolnir, something only the Dwarves could create.

Thor clearly remembered that, and he shared a strange look with Steven before shrugging. “There is a weapon the Dwarves of Nidavellir can create for me. It is a King’s weapon called Stormbreaker, and it is even more powerful than Mjolnir. It is the only weapon capable of defeating Thanos.”

Loki ran his thumb over Stephen’s knuckles. “Is that weapon only powerful enough against Thanos with all of the Infinity Stones? Surely Mjolnir is powerful enough against him when he only has one or two Stones.”

Thor shook his head. “I refuse to take the chance. Of course, I will have to find the Guardians.”

There were a few questions from the Avengers, and Thor quickly explained that the Guardians of the Galaxy were a ragtag group of aliens that fancied themselves the last defence of any threat against the galaxy at large. They were essentially mercenaries for hire, and Thor was terribly fond of them. But he would have to find them, as this timeline was very different than the one he had left, and he didn’t know where they were. 

Thor decided that he and Stark would search together for the Guardians, and that Steven would stay at the Sanctum, helping Loki, Wong, and Stephen in the search for spells to defeat and incapacitate Thanos. None of the other Avengers were comfortable enough around Loki to want to help him, but they all swore they would do their own research from the Avengers Facility, and they would also do their best to help Thor and Stark find the Guardians.

Before Thor went with Stark back to his facility, he cornered Loki on the couch, shooing Stephen away as he yanked Loki’s shirt open, tracing the lightning across Loki’s back. “Thank you, brother,” Thor whispered into his hair, and he held Loki close to his chest. “You do not know what this means to me.”

“I told you, my King, that everything I am belongs to you.”

Thor leaned away and threaded his hand through Loki’s hair, tilting his head back so they could look each other in the eye. A few of the Avengers were still around them, awkwardly watching their interaction, but neither God paid them any mind. They needed the humans’ assistance in defeating Thanos, but ultimately, they were only a means to an end, and expendable. They were only flickers in nearly eternal lives.

“Finally,” Thor breathed, “I find myself believing you.”

And gentle lips pressed between Loki’s eyes, right in the place where his seidr was twisted up and powerful. Thor always knew how to draw up his loyalty, even when he didn’t need to.

His soul settled and caught in Thor’s fingers, Loki leaned back in his seat and buttoned up his tunic, watching as Thor followed the Avengers out of the Sanctum, laughing off the questions about his relationship with Loki. Stephen came to perch uncomfortably on the settee next to Loki, and Steven pulled up a chair, reclining back in it a few feet away from them.

“You belong to him?” Steven finally asked, and then he rubbed his temples with his fingers. “I knew your relationship wasn’t normal by our standards, but this is beyond me.”

Loki frowned at him. “He struck me with lightning.” He leaned forward, wincing as his muscles protested, and lifted his hair off the back of his neck, the entry point still sharp and pink against his skin. Stephen’s shaking fingers traced the outline of it, and Loki looked up to see Steve shaking his head. 

“I understand we have cultural differences,” Loki tried, after thinking for a few moments, “and that I cannot adequately explain to you the vast depths of my relationship with Thor, as it is over one thousand years old, but I can tell you this: when I was young, around one hundred years old, I found a book. It explained to me that very powerful seidrmadrs have to have an anchor, something to pull them out of the abyss. From a young age, I had known I was very powerful, and as I grew older, and more in control of my seidr, I realized I would need an anchor.

“I went to my brother. Our culture holds physical accomplishments and power in battle over almost anything else, and Thor was no different. I studied and trained for hundreds of years only to have my seidr be called ‘tricks’, as if I was a child. But he listened to me when I explained to him that I needed him. It is a great honor in Asgard to be given someone’s loyalty, as it usually happens with shield brothers or those who have gone through great strife together. I was nearly out of control, and had no other choice.”

Both of the humans looked fascinated, and Loki smirked at them. “I spent a thousand years chafing in my brother’s shadow, not realizing what I had, what I had been given by having Thor’s loyalty in return for my own. It took me so long to realize my place. But that’s not important, not truly.”

“How so?” Steve asked, and Loki sighed.

“I know I have already said this, Captain, but I do feel sincere remorse for my attack upon your realm. I should have kept to my place at Thor’s side, but I was awash in the waters of betrayal from Odin. Because of our years together, my seidr is bound to Thor. I spent so many times in our youth, and now nearly a decade trying to get out from under him, and I realize now that I cannot, and it is fruitless to try. My place is at his side, or on my knees in front of him, if he so wishes.”

“How? How can you live like that? How can you just...belong to someone else?” Steve questioned, his voice bright with confusion.

“How do you not? I have never known anything different. I understand now that when Odin took me from Jotunheim, that he gave me to Thor, and it only took me fifteen hundred years to realize it. But yes, I belong to him.”

“So you are his, then,” Stephen murmured, and Loki put his hand on top of Stephen’s scarred one. “I did not understand the expanse of your relationship, I believed it was something recent.”

“Surely I am. But that should not stop what we have between us, regardless of the length of our lives.” Loki shifted in his seat and smiled darkly. “Surely you can continue to take your pleasure in me, regardless of who my soul belongs to.”

Steve cleared his throat and then vacated the room. Loki chuckled, twisting in the settee so he was fully facing Stephen. 

“I can also belong to more than one man at once,” Loki told him, and leaned in for a kiss, which Stephen reluctantly gave him. He pulled back, saying, “I understand this may be confusing for you. But I am the same person I was before this.”

“Are you?” Stephen replied, gently removing himself from Loki and standing up, pacing with short, angry strides. “I know you’re here only for the fight to defeat Thanos. But there’s a place for you here, on Earth. With me.”

Loki leaned back against the settee, cursing his aching muscles, as they wouldn’t even let him stand. “I thank you for that, but I am here for Thor,” he told the witch, watching with confusion as Stephen’s face fell. “I fear we are still at a misunderstanding.”

“He’s the only reason you stay?”

He thought he had explained it well enough. “He brought me here. He’s the only one who can let me leave.”

Stephen tried to curl his fingers into his fists, but they wouldn’t cooperate, and he swore at them, turning his furious gaze to Loki. “I don’t mean physically. I mean, when this ends, what are you going to do? Am I doing all of this for nothing?” He bared his teeth. “You clearly put your brother above—”

“Of course I do!” Loki shot back. “He is my King, he is my _brother_. He owns me, me and my loyalty, and my seidr. But it is remiss of you to assume I can’t care about anyone outside of that bond.” He snarled, “You are a human, witch or otherwise. Your life nothing more than a heartbeat compared to what I have with my brother. You cannot understand the complexities of a relationship that has spanned more than a thousand years, and will go for thousands more. Just because we are in a relationship or what-have-you, does not mean you can attempt to change something that has been a part of me for over a dozen of your lifetimes. He can do far worse to me than strike me with lightning and I would welcome it.” There was far more than he could say, but his seidr was slipping through his fingers, and he could not pull it back in.

“But Thor shouldn’t be allowed—”

Something creaked around him and Loki looked away from Stephen’s stunned face to calm down, pulling his seidr back into him, pulling back the green flames that had sprung from his skin. “Thor!” Loki barked, and he sat back in the settee to wait.

It only took a few moments, and then a thunderous boom sounded outside the Sanctum, causing the windows to shake as the sky flashed. There was a crash as Thor collided with the ground, and then the walls shook as Thor slammed open the front doors, roaring Loki’s name. He stormed up the stairs, the Sanctum suddenly alight with electricity.

Loki held out his hand and Thor took it, dropping to a knee as he murmured Loki’s name, looking around the room for whatever had threatened his brother.

Looking up at Stephen’s horrified face, Loki silkily requested, “Take me away from here, brother,” and Thor took Loki into his arms, calling for Heimdall as Stephen stretched out a hand for Loki to stay.

They landed back at the Avengers Facility, where Thor housed Loki away in the rooms he had been given, and Loki curled up in the bed, closing his eyes and wishing for sleep.

He should’ve known better. He knew his place, and he’d strayed. His soul had a home, and he’d attempted to move it. Who was a mortal to him anyway? Stephen was an infant compared to him; he was what, forty years old? A child. No wonder he didn’t understand. Perhaps the Fates had shown him the wrong path.

It took a few hours, but Thor returned as the sun set, with a couple platters of food. He poured both of them mugs of ale and helped Loki sit up, sitting next to his brother and slinging his arm over Loki’s shoulders. “I am glad you came back to me,” Thor told him, and gently traced the lightning around Loki’s throat.

Loki leaned against his brother and picked through the food Thor had brought him, frowning at it. He preferred Asgardian cuisine. But he ate a bit of it, the food and ale warming his stomach. 

“He does not understand.”

“Of course he doesn’t, brother. I care deeply for the humans but they simply do not have the ability to understand what we have. We are not better than them, but we are different than them, and we live vastly different lives.”

“How could he ask for you to be put before him?”

Thor’s hand tightened around his neck. “I assume you...corrected that assumption.”

“Of course, my King.”

They settled in silence for awhile, and then Thor took their platters away, coming back to turn out the lights and curl up next to Loki in the bed. Finally comfortable, Loki cuddled back into his brother and welcomed the hand at his neck, and he was finally able to sleep.

* * *

Returning to the Sanctum was uncomfortable. Thor had spoken to Stark, and Thor was going to spend the mornings and nights with Loki, and the afternoons at the Avengers Facility. Steven had also been asked to keep an eye on Stephen, and to keep him away from Loki. 

But, of course, Stephen took his usual seat next to Loki at their shared table, and they read in silence, Thor and Steve sharing the table closest to them, Thor throwing the witch dark looks. Loki was feeling better, his own seidr having spent the previous night healing the damage from Thor’s lightning, and he was mostly able to stand and walk without assistance. Of course, Thor didn’t like him to, and was attempting to carry him everywhere, much to Loki’s protests.

The morning passed in relative silence, Thor bringing Loki cups of tea and new books, doing his best to ignore Stephen.

After lunch, where Thor had gotten two plates and then sequestered Loki in his bedroom, Thor made sure Loki was settled and then excused himself, giving Stephen a dark, warning look. Steven joined Loki on the couch in Thor’s room and they ate in silence.

He was on Midgard to defeat Thanos, to keep his brother happy, to keep his head on his shoulders where it belonged. Not to start up some tryst. He was a Prince of the Realm Eternal, not the kind of person to degrade himself with a mortal. He was property of the King and the crown, in this time or the next.

The next few days passed in uncomfortable silence. He and Stephen had had a few conversations about the type of spells they were looking for, and Steve was strangely easy enough to get along with, sharing his confusion about the modern world with Loki. They had a few long talks over mugs of ale about Steve’s history on Midgard, about his military training and the strange Secret Soldier program he had been a part of. Steven was more alike an Aesir than human, Loki learned. How very interesting.

They did not skirt around Loki’s first time on Midgard. Steve explained about the war he had fought in, what he had been through before he had gone under the ice, and also, of his old friend Bucky, who had been an agent for HYDRA, and was now recovering in Wakanda, whatever that meant. Loki went into detail about his time under Thanos, about what he had suffered at the hand of the Other and his time beneath the Mind Stone, and he waved away the horrified look on Steven’s face.

They shared war stories, Steven sharing about HYDRA and the Red Skull, and Loki talking about the hunts he had gone on, the battles he had fought in, the spells he had spent decades mastering. Loki found himself strangely understanding of the Captain, of his long history. The man out of time. The man in front of him was no longer the man that had met him on Midgard the first time. Even as they were allies, he found himself liking this one more. They were markedly different people but even Loki had similarities with the famed Captain.

Steven showed him how to use the internet, and also pulled up something called a ‘website’ that apparently held information about Loki. As Loki was reading about himself, pointing out the various inaccuracies, he looked up at met Steve’s warm gaze.

“You and my brother are shield brothers,” Loki noted, leaning back in his chair. “I understand the two of you spent a great amount of time together while I was imprisoned.”

A great deal had happened while Loki had been imprisoned, it seemed. Thor had given him a brief rundown of the similarities between this timeline and the one that Loki had died first in, and Steve had unknowingly corroborated Thor’s story. 

He had a brief moment of wonder on how Thor had lived through the same things so many times, but he refused to let himself think about it. He spent every day just managing to survive it, regardless of whether or not he was fully in Thor’s good graces; he just didn’t need to think about it. 

Steven nodded. “I have great respect for your brother. Although, I will admit, it has lessened as I learned of his treatment of you.”

Loki rolled his eyes. “Have you ever felt as if you belonged with someone? Even only a friend. Or fought for a cause you believed in? It is similar. Our souls are intertwined. I belong to him.”

“Interesting comparison,” Steve replied, staring off into the distance. He took a few minutes and then spoke of his loyalty to his friend Bucky, how he was the last remaining link to his past, how Bucky had been the only one to believe in him, how Bucky was the most important person in the world to him. And then, he said, that he still did not completely understand, but that he could relate.

They were comfortable in silence as Loki returned to reading about himself.

“I wonder what my brother will say when he hears I have children,” Loki mused, scrolling down the screen. Steven had called the strange device an iPad, and it felt thin and breakable in his hands.

“Children?” Stephen asked as he walked into the TV room, giving the two of them a strange look. 

“Yes,” Loki replied shortly. “Your...internet says that I have children. I find it very interesting, as I have never had sex with a horse, nor a Jotun, and while I believe I can get pregnant, it takes very powerful spells over a long period of time. This also says I am married to a woman, of all things. I have heard of the World Serpent, of course, but I am fairly certain he predates even me.” He tapped his fingers on the edge of the screen and smiled down at it. “Although I do take…satisfaction from learning that my apparent progeny will bring about the end of existence, as it were.”

Stephen sat down next to him, motioning towards the strange device. His hands weren’t strong enough to hold it, so he set it on his knee, and Loki leaned closer as they read down the screen together.

Steve quietly left the room, making an offhand comment about dinner. 

“I wonder how these myths were started,” Loki mused, tapping on Fenrir’s name on the device, frowning as it took them to a different page. “Ah, this says Fenrir bit off Tyr’s hand. I was the one to do that.”

“For what reason?”

“He touched you,” Thor thundered from the doorway. “I held him down as you cut it off.” He came closer and frowned down at the strange device. “Why are you bringing up that beast? Fenris has been dead in Asgard’s vaults for many centuries.”

“We are reading the strange myths Midgard has of me.”

Thor laughed, sitting on the other side of Loki, casually slinging his arm around Loki’s waist. “When I came to Earth the first time, the Lady Jane showed me a few books about myself. I was very confused! But it is no matter. We are not here for these falsehoods. How goes your research? Have you found anything, witch?”

Stephen put the iPad down and scooted a bit away, gloving his hands. “There is almost no information in any of these books on how to counteract the Reality Stone. We have spells on how to contort reality…” Understanding dawned on his face. “Have you heard of the Dark Dimension?”

“Of course not,” Loki replied. 

“Masters of the Mystic Arts open up other dimensions and realities to use their energy for spells, simply put. I thought first of the Mirror Dimension, but surely Thanos would be able to smash his way out of that. There is a Dark Dimension, which we are not allowed to take our power from. But I feel as if it may be the only place with powerful enough energy to incapacitate Thanos.”

Loki leaned into Thor’s side, thinking quickly. From what he had read of the mystic arts, it was very powerful, but could only be as powerful enough as the sorcerer wielding it, along with the power of the dimension the energy was being taken from. “I happen to be very skilled at concealment spells. If we could use your spells from the Dark Dimension, and my skills at concealment, while Thor incapacitates him…”

“It seems we may have a chance,” Stephen finished, and they smiled gently at each other.

Thor shouted, lifting Loki up and carrying him out of the room. “Come, Doctor! Captain! We must celebrate!”

Steve came out of the kitchen and smiled at Thor’s excited face, throwing Loki a concerned look. Thor called for alcohol and lifted Loki up so he was sitting on Thor’s shoulder, parading Loki around the library a few times before swinging him down to the floor, wrapping his arms around his brother’s shoulders.

“You are usually far more inebriated to be treating me as such, brother,” Loki noted once he was safe with his feet on the floor, taking the mug of ale that Steve handed him. 

Thor drank his entire drink and then abandoned his mug on a nearby table. “Tonight, we will have none of your Midgard drinks. Loki, bring us some true wine. I will see your witch and the Captain drunk with us tonight.”

Steve called out that he actually couldn’t get drunk, and Stephen denied any alcohol, but the two of them watched in interest as Loki flicked his fingers and a large bottle of wine, covered in strange scrolling gold, dropped onto the table. A moment later, two large chalices landed next to them.

“Let us drink!” Thor roared, and poured himself a full glass, giving Loki the first sip and then nearly drowning himself in the rest. He called for Loki to bring him a meal, and Loki obliged, joining Stephen as the witch watched in equal parts amazement and horror as Thor drank an entire bottle of wine and devoured an entire roast, along with potatoes and greens. It was enough food for ten men, and Loki knew his brother would most likely be hungry again in an hour or two.

“Is that how all of you eat?”

“My brother has a particularly voracious appetite,” Loki admitted. “I have a theory that his specific type of seidr takes a great deal more energy than most other types, and he also trains in the practice grounds daily. On Midgard, he does what you humans call ‘working out’.”

“Interesting.” Stephen left him to join Steve in the kitchen, and Loki went to his brother, taking his own cup of wine and settling on his brother’s lap when Thor patted his thigh.

“Do not fret, beloved,” Thor told him, and Loki shook his head. He should’ve known better. He had been given his brief weeks of something _else,_ something other than this, and he only wished it felt like enough. 

No bother.

He finished off Thor’s potatoes and, flicking his fingers, brought up a plate of Midgardian chicken, delicately eating it between sips of wine.

Asgard liquor always settled him more than Midgard alcohol did. His body relaxed and his mind slowed and calmed. His seidr even calmed, going from furious waves to a gentle pool.

It took awhile, but Stephen and Steve came up to them, both of them asking to try the Asgardian wine. Steve had had a previous experience with it, saying that his digestion was too fast for him to metabolize the alcohol. 

“I do not recommend you drink it, Stephen,” Loki told the witch, but with a smile, he handed over his cup anyway. “Only take one sip.”

Stephen obliged, all of them laughing at him as he took a sip and then immediately staggered. Steve took the chalice from him and took a few drinks himself before shaking his head and setting it back on the table. Loki chuckled, getting up from Thor’s lap and helping the witch to a chair.

“It is very strong,” Loki told him, going down on one knee before Stephen and tugging off the witch’s gloves. He pulled the Cloak of Levithan off and amusedly shook his head. 

A trembling hand rested on his head as Stephen listed off to the side, trying to blink away the drunkness. “I miss you,” Stephen whispered, and he nearly tipped off the chair.

Thor called Loki back to him, and Steve picked Stephen up to take him to his bed so he could sleep it back. Loki took his place on Thor’s lap, the two of them talking quietly and finishing off the bottle of wine before Thor took him to his bedroom.

Thor waved for Loki to undress him, and Loki obliged, finding comfort in the familiar act of undoing buckles and hooks and laces, taking comfort in his long fingers against Thor’s warm skin. The Lichtenberg figure on his skin twinged as he removed his own clothes and joined Thor in bed, and his soul settled as Thor leaned over him, tracing the marks over his throat.

“You like that you collared me,” Loki murmured, tipping his head back into the pillows.

“I realized it when you wore Stark’s collar for me. I was considering getting another for you when you allowed me this.” Thor’s hand fisted in his hair and he held Loki’s head back, leaning forward to press a kiss to Loki’s throat. “You are mine,” Thor told him, and then he laid back down, dragging Loki on top of him by his hair.

He managed to get comfortable on Thor’s chest, even with the hand pulling at his hair, and he wondered what Stephen had meant by missing him.


	8. CH8

Thor was hungover the next morning, as was Stephen, and Thor met the witch in the kitchen after depositing Loki in the bath.

Stephen was nursing a cup of coffee when Thor banged into the kitchen, and he winced at the loud god. They kept silent for a few minutes as Thor tried to cook himself breakfast, and then the god turned to Stephen.

“My brother cares for you, witch,” Thor told him, resting his palms on the table and looming over Stephen. “I find myself fond of humans as well, but few of them are fond of my brother. Fewer even have the honor of his attention.”

“I understand,” Stephen told him, even though he didn’t.

“I have changed greatly in my time under this spell. I see the same things, watch the same unstoppable events happen, and I feel as if I am losing my mind the same way every time. But this time is different. I believe that you are part of that change. I told my brother that he is allowed to have…relations with you.”

Thor turned back to the stove and turned it off, picking up the pan with his burning eggs, and he grabbed a fork and went back to the table, sitting across from Stephen. 

“He did his best to explain your relationship, Thor, but I still don’t quite understand it. On Earth, people don’t…belong to other people.”

“We’re not from Earth,” Thor told him, pointing his fork at Stephen. “And yes, he does belong to me. It helps his seidr.” He swallowed another forkful of burnt eggs and made a face, but continued eating. “It also keeps him from...injury.”

“Injury?” Stephen repeated, and Thor leaned closer.

“Although my brother is a Prince of our realm, his tricks have gained him no favor with our people. Especially as he was learning, he was volatile, and often caused damage to those around him. Nothing permanent, of course, and nothing more than what I caused. And then as he grew older, he began his…schemes. Pranks and all that. Some of them were very funny, of course, as Loki has a delightful sense of humor. But his binding to me reduced some of that, as they would have to go through me to hurt him.”

“You protect him,” Stephen mused.

“Of course. He belongs to me.”

“What do you get out of...your relationship?”

Thor finished off the last of the eggs and crossed his arms over his chest. “My brother is very dear to me. He has been by my side for fifteen hundred years. I gain a great deal from him—I have the loyalty of one of the most powerful seidrmadrs of our age, I have an excellent political advisor and trained diplomat, I have ways into places that no one else could find. But above all, even if I was given nothing else from him, I have Loki. I have my brother.”

“I did not realize you cared so deeply for him,” Stephen admitted, and Thor laughed at him.

“You have met him! My brother is many things, but he can be intolerable. You have to love him to be around him.”

“Greetings to you as well, Thor,” Loki greeted drolly as he sauntered into the kitchen, tapping Thor on the head and relieving him of his hangover. He waved his hand at Stephen, who nodded, and Loki pressed his finger to Stephen’s forehead for a moment longer than necessary, and then he took the seat next to his brother, conjuring up a small meal for himself.

They sat in silence as Loki ate, Thor watching his brother fondly. “Have you thought more upon your spells to aid in Thanos’s defeat?”

“Of course,” Loki replied, but he was interrupted in explaining further by Steve coming into the kitchen, telling Thor that Stark had found Nidavellir, and was in contact with the Guardians of the Galaxy.

The star had gone out, which meant that Thanos had already gotten the Gauntlet from Eitri. 

Thor watched as his friends left the kitchen, Stephen and Loki talking about spells and seidr and carefully avoided the topic of their relationship, with Steve behind them, and he stayed, alone for just a minute.

His hands were shaking.

Flexing his fingers into fists, Thor took a few deep breaths. He had never made it this far; he was in completely uncharted territory. The years before this, everything had always been the same if he and Loki had made it past his years in prison. But they had never made it past the collar. Loki had only accepted it one time before, and Stark’s solution had killed him. Thor had nearly leveled New York City in his rage. 

He had spent so many decades and centuries trying to be a good man.

He had lost all his hope and all his faith when he had failed to kill Thanos. He was alive only by the grace of fate, and fate did not even want him to kill the most horrible villain in all the universe. So, he had taken fate in his own hands.

In his search for the spell that had ultimately taken him back in time, he had stumbled upon a spell that had shown him alternate timelines and futures and universes. And in every single one of them, he and Loki had been together. In every universe, in every world, Loki belonged with him. Even in timelines where Odin hadn’t stolen Loki, where Loki had been a prince of Jotunheim and had been Thor’s enemy, they always had been friends or allies or even lovers. 

Their souls were tied together.

Loki’s seidr tugged at him and Thor shook himself out of his thoughts, swallowing the last of Stephen’s coffee and leaving the kitchen.

The war was on. After hundreds of attempts to fix the timeline that he had failed, he was finally going to get a chance to fix everything. He finally was going to have a chance to truly kill Thanos.

Thor smiled to himself and rolled lightning over his knuckles. Finally.

* * *

They all went through one of Stephen’s portals and convened in the Avengers Facility, Loki taking a seat between Stephen and Thor at the great meeting table. Thor was quiet, strangely so. He smelled strongly of petrichor, and Loki leaned his cheek against Thor’s shoulder as Stark and Steve attempted to figure out who would go to Nidavellir and who would stay with Loki and Stephen on Midgard. 

Thor’s rough fingers traced over the mark on the back of Loki’s neck as Thor spoke up. “The journey to Nidavellir is many months. I am uncomfortable being away from my brother for that long.” Loki nodded in agreement. “But no one else can go to Nidavellir in my place. I can restart the forge, but no one else is powerful enough. However, once I have the weapon, I will have the power of the Bifrost, and can immediately bring myself and anyone who goes with me back to Midgard.”

“Why can’t the Bifrost take you to Nidavellir in the first place?” Stark questioned. “This would be a lot easier if—”

“Heimdall sees all,” Loki interrupted. “But only in the Nine Realms. Nidavellir is only adjacent…” he trailed off for a moment and then smirked. “The closest Realm is Jotunheim. We could ask the King of that Realm if he would allow us passage.”

“You would have to come with,” Thor told him. “Laufey knows of your heritage now. He would be obliged to listen to you over anyone else.”

Loki ignored the confused looks from the rest of the Avengers as he turned his attention fully to his brother, tapping at his chin with one long finger. “He abandoned me to the ice. I would fully like that debt repaid. However, the trip from Jotunheim to Nidavellir would still be months. Less time surely, but still months.”

Thor nodded slowly and turned back to their friends, looking between their confused faces. “I must go to Nidavellir. I will have to find the Guardians of the Galaxy.”

“I found them,” Stark called out, pulling up a few faces on the screen at the end of the table. Thor smiled at the pictures of his friends. “Peter Quill, Gamora, Groot, Drax, and Rocket Raccoon.”

“Raccoon?” Thor repeated quietly. “I thought he was a rabbit.”

“Do you even know what a rabbit is?” Loki asked him.

“I have seen many rabbits!” Thor shot back indignantly. “Certainly I have seen more than you.”

Loki rolled his eyes. “How have you seen more rabbits than I have when you don’t even know what they are? Certainly not enough to know the difference between a rabbit and a raccoon.”

“Well, which one talks?”

“Neither,” Stephen interrupted. “Animals don’t talk on Earth. Now will the two of you quit?”

“Animals do not speak on Asgard either,” Thor informed him, leaning around Loki to point at Stephen.

“What’s your excuse then?”

“I should strike you down for that comment,” Thor shot back through a grin, but he briefly palmed the back of Loki’s neck and put his attention back on Stark, who was talking as if they hadn’t interrupted him.

“They have just destroyed a planet, it seems. The location was G52 22C848T12F+E16UC22. I can track possible routes, but it seems the ship is capable of a type of travel our ships aren’t capable of yet.” Stark pulled up a rotating hologram of their ship and the Avengers all looked up at it. 

“It is hyperspace travel,” Thor told him. “The Rabbit explained it to me once. There are fissures in the universe that are essentially gateways to other points in the galaxy. Some ships are capable of traveling through these ‘jump spots’. Earth hasn’t found this technology yet?” He and Loki exchanged an amused glance. Even Asgard had ships capable of hyperspace travel. 

Stark looked fascinated but volunteered himself for the journey instead of asking Thor a thousand questions about it. Bruce and, after a long moment, the Black Widow, said they would go as well.

“You will journey to at least three Realms, or planets,” Thor offered to the other hesitant Avengers, and Hawkeye gave Loki a wary glance and then volunteered himself. Thor smiled at his new partners and nodded. “I assume it will take awhile for the ship to be ready? I can ask my father to send a few Asgardian scientists and seidrmadrs here if you believe that will help.”

“Oh, I definitely wouldn’t _mind_ ,” Stark grinned. “Do you and Mischief Managed over here need to go home? Bring a few of your wizards back with you?”

Loki frowned at the strange nickname but shrugged at his brother’s questioning look. “I brought back nearly two hundred books from our last visit home, but I could ask Mother more questions about what she foretold in her loom. We also need appropriate clothes for the humans for Jotunheim; nothing they have on this Realm will be suitable.”

“Can we go with you?” the Black Widow asked. 

“Perhaps not this time,” Thor told her apologetically. “It is generally frowned upon to bring beings from other Realms into Asgard without asking permission from the King.”

Stark talked about how he could modify one of his Quinjets and asked Thor and Loki for advice, but neither of them had ever been involved in any type of ship building on their Realm. Thor awkwardly mentioned they were royalty and the conversation moved to asking Loki about what spells he thought could kill or incapacitate Thanos.

Loki smirked, leaning forward and waving his hands over the table in front of him. Two small human-like figures appeared on the table. They had no faces and were small and dark. Thor smiled at the memory of Loki using similar figures in their past, to amuse the two of them with battles that Thor would retell, or to explain lessons that Thor hadn’t quite understood, or even when Thor had made fun of Loki’s seidr, Loki had used the figures to show how his seidr was even more effective in battle than Thor’s strength and his hammer.

The Avengers watched, enraptured, as one of the small figures lifted it’s fist and brought the other figure to its knees. “As you can see, I believe that Thor’s seidr can at least, temporarily incapacitate Thanos. All we need is a moment of weakness.” Two more figures appeared next to the figure that had brought down the lightning, and twin beams of green and orange light hit the fourth figure, bringing him from his knees to prone on the table. “Both Stephen and I are powerful enough to kill Thanos. But only Thor can incapacitate him.”

Loki rubbed his hand across his face and took a deep breath. “It is very difficult to find a spell to kill a being as powerful as Thanos. I can kill almost anything, but even without all six Infinity Stones, Thanos is nearly indestructible. I have nothing in my repertoire to give any of you an example…but I believe I have found a spell. _Dugreptir_ is the closest approximate in your language. The ability to put to death. All of my research shows that it is a spell that is very old, ancient even, and will be powerful enough to destroy Thanos. Thankfully, I am powerful enough by far to wield it.”

Stephen spoke up, “We haven’t quite found a spell that I can use, but I have been able to adapt some of the Asgardian magic into my own mystic arts. I would like to speak to one of your seidrmadrs,” he told Loki, who frowned at him but nodded slowly. “Now we just have to find him.”

The meeting was disbanded soon after that, after Thor mentioned that Thanos could be heading towards Xandar or Vormir. They had to assume that if they had information that Thanos had it as well, and was most likely a few steps ahead of them. Stark would attempt to find Thanos, somewhere in the endless universe, and Thor would return to Asgard, and hopefully bring back a few of their scientists and seidrmadrs for a visit. Loki and Stephen would go home to the Sanctum, and Steve would visit them once a day or so.

Loki tuned out what the rest of the Avengers would be doing, watching the figures he had brought into existence perform their endless battle over and over again. He vanished them when Thor palmed the back of his neck, and they went back to the Sanctum through one of Stephen’s portals.

The three of them emptied out in the TV room, and Loki threw himself dramatically down onto the couch, leaning his head back against the armrest and looking up at the ceiling. Thor laughed at him and pulled his boots off, tossing his cape over Loki and leaving the room.

Stephen pushed Loki’s feet off the couch and took their place, using the remote to turn on the TV. They watched in silence for awhile.

Finally, after gathering up the courage, and swallowing his pride, something he rarely had to do in his life, Loki said, “I apologize.”

“For what?” Stephen asked, not looking away from the TV.

“I still do not understand your reticence about my relationship with my brother, but I apologize for upsetting you.”

Stephen turned his head to look down at Loki, and he frowned. “Of course I was upset. Thor had just struck you with lightning, something that regularly kills people, and you shrugged it off like it was no big deal. Of course I was going to have an opinion about it.”

Nodding, Loki tried to understand. “I can’t change my relationship with Thor. But we don’t need to argue over it.”

“I wasn’t arguing with you,” Stephen told him, his voice slow. “I was upset for you, because he hurt you.”

What?

_What?_

His first instinct was to run.

Instead, he just sat up and put his head in his hands.

His entire life…over a thousand years, who had ever cared if he had hurt? Perhaps besides Thor and Frigga. But double that apathy towards anyone caring if Thor specifically had been the one to hurt him. Even Frigga had waved off young Loki’s complaints about Thor being too rough with him or pinning him down or not letting him do what he wanted; that was just how Thor was, after all, and Loki had to accept that. Nobody, it seemed, had to accept Loki for how _he_ was, but he had to accept Thor. Everyone wanted to change Loki, but Thor was perfect.

“Worried about me?” Loki parroted. “Far worse things have been done to me than a bit of lightning.”

A shaking hand gently rested on his shoulder. “Surely you understand that no harm should come to you at all.”

He wanted to _run_.

“He owns me,” Loki told him, breathing into his hands. “You do not _understand_. It feels as if you intentionally do not understand. He can strike me with lightning or tear me to pieces. I gave that to him, because I need an anchor. I gave him my loyalty and my trust that he would take care of me. You are powerful enough in your own right but your seidr is very different than mine. My seidr is uncontrolled, a rapid river running through my skin. I spent hundreds of years damming it back. Thor helps me do that. Hurting me or otherwise, he helps.”

“He struck you with lightning,” Stephen pressed. “So that he could show everyone that he owns you. You still don’t see a problem with that?”

“My soul is his. I lose nothing by giving him a bit of my skin as well.”

Stephen sighed. “I wish I could understand.”

Loki sat up and turned to the witch. “Perhaps I can show you,” he offered. “Your...inferior mind would not be able to comprehend the depths that our souls are bound.” He waved off Stephen’s attempt at being offended. “It is no insult. Your mind simply isn’t capable of understanding something that spans generations. But I can show you a portion of it.”

Stephen nodded his acceptance, and Loki leaned over to press his finger to the witch’s forehead. 

Just for a moment, Loki opened his soul.

He did not do it often, because it only rarely needed to be done. But he gave Stephen a momentary peek into the massive, angry depths of his tumultuous soul, a glimpse into how that even at the core of who he was, he belonged to Thor. The grey and silver of his soul was wrapped up in lightning and rain and thunder, all twisted together like a tornado. 

A great stormcloud towered over his soul, and there he was, even at his most inner parts, below Thor. Always kneeling.

Just before he pulled Stephen away, he noticed a strange orange flash at the outer edge of his soul, but he was distracted by Stephen’s shriek.

For all of the witch’s intellect, he was still human. Weak and inferior, even for all Loki cared about him.

It took a few minutes for Stephen to calm down, and Loki pressed his head to the witch’s chest and Stephen held him close, face pressed into his hair. “I didn’t understand,” Stephen breathed. “And I still don’t. But I _saw._ ”

“That’s all that matters,” Loki told him, and twisted his fingers up in the shaking hand that sought his. “I have a theory,” he said, and sent a tendril of seidr out to make sure Thor couldn’t overhear them. Once he was certain they were safe, he continued, his voice low, “Hundreds of versions of me came before this, and Thor killed all of them. I was never good enough for him, and I’m still not. I was often too wounded, too traumatized. But I am submissive enough. And none of the ones that came before me were. And that’s what he needed.” 

“Why?”

“I don’t rightly know,” Loki admitted, not for the first time. “But he needs it, he always has, and I can give it to him. It’s not my place to ask.”

“What is your place?” Stephen asked.

“Wherever he puts me.”

They were both quiet for a long time. They curled up together on the couch, Stephen kicking off his shoes and Loki using seidr to change their clothes into more comfortable loungewear. He kicked Thor’s cloak to the floor, and the Cloak of Levitation settled over them like a blanket. Stephen pressed a kiss over the mark on the back of Loki’s neck.

Slowly, gently, Loki fell asleep, warm and content.

* * *

Thor left for Asgard in the morning, tracing the marks on Loki’s neck and telling him to be good before he called for Heimdall. He gave Stephen a knowing smile and a nod before the Bifrost took him away.

They were alone.

As he had felt before, Loki felt the strange sensation of slipping into someone else’s life, into a comfortable routine. He and Stephen spent their days making meals for each other, researching, sharing mugs of coffee, passing a notebook back and forth to write and compare notes, cuddling on the couch as they watched TV. Stephen shared stories from his years in medical school and as a surgeon, and similarly, Loki shared adventures from his years on Asgard with Thor. Wong occasionally told tales of his time on Earth, what types of seidr he knew, and he seemed to always be awake and cooking something when Loki awoke from a nightmare and stumbled into the kitchen. Loki also told Stephen about his adventures to other worlds, and after seeing the fascinated, wondrous look on Stephen’s face, he spent half a day building a few various mirages so that Stephen could experience a resemblance of other Realms. 

He invited Stephen into Alfheim, the realm of the Alfar, the light elves. It was a world of plains and forests, with long days and short nights. Stephen wandered around in astonishment, reaching out to touch a tree, but his hand phased through. Loki looked around in disdain. Even his own recreation of the realm was distasteful. 

“Illusionary magic cannot create physical objects, most especially not on this scale.”

“You said you didn’t need the Reality Stone to have someone question their reality.”

Loki smirked, following Stephen as he wandered through the tall trees, examining the fauna that was so different than on Midgard. “Your mind doesn’t need to touch something to believe it’s real. You know fully well that we are still in your Sanctum on Midgard, but your brain believes you have traveled to an alien planet.” He spread out his arms and tipped his head back. “It is true for most beings. All they need to do is see and smell and hear something to believe it to be true, especially something as foreign as a new planet.”

“How many times have you created portals like this?”

“It’s not exactly a portal, it’s more that we’re stepping into a painting. I have an image in my head of what Alfheim is, and I brought that image to life, and took you inside it. You cannot touch a memory or a dream.”

Stephen continued walking for a few minutes and they arrived at a small bridge over a slow, melodic stream. He cocked his head to the side as he listened to the water.

“It sounds different here,” he mused, and turned to Loki for an explanation.

“ _Ausa,_ ” Loki told him. “It is not water, not as you have on Midgard. Similar enough to be called water, and if this stream were real, you could drink from it. But it has seidr in it, and has different properties based on the person or animal that drinks it. It would turn to wine in your mouth, or the most refreshing drink, or coffee or tea. Rather, the Alfheim version of coffee or tea. But the seidr gives it a more musical tone, I believe.”

“It sounds like a song.”

Loki rolled his eyes. “That’s Alfheim for you.” He watched amusedly as Stephen continued to wander around, but he eventually grew bored. He had seen the Midgardians regularly stare at some little pocket rectangle they all seemed to carry—perhaps it was a type of notebook, or diary? Maybe even a small encyclopedia—and Loki wondered where he could get one. He had seen Wong with one a few times but the witch had never trusted him enough to get near it.

“Are you satisfied?” he finally called out, and Stephen made his way back, shaking his head. 

“I don’t believe I could ever be. What kind of animals are on Alfheim? What’s their architecture like? Are all Realms monarchies like Asgard?”

He continued on with the questions but Loki just waved his hand and the portal faded away, leaving them back in the Sanctum. Stephen immediately picked up a pen and wrote down all of his questions, muttering under his breath. Loki stepped up behind him, squinting at Stephen’s poor handwriting. 

“The Nine Realms are separate spiral galaxies all connected by the great world tree, Yggdrasil. Asgard is the protector of the Nine Realms, as is her King and all his armies. The Nine Realms are Asgard, Midgard, Alfheim, Niflheim, Svartalfheim, Jotunheim, Vanaheim, Musphelheim, and Helheim. Nidavellir is adjacent to the Nine Realms, but not part of it. By Midgard ship, it is a journey of many months.”

“Not even the Bifrost could take anyone there?”

Loki shrugged. “Thor says it is beyond the sight of Heimdall. I have no reason to distrust him on that. That does not mean it is beyond the reach of the Bifrost, only that Heimdall cannot take us there.” He peered back down at Stephen’s list of questions. “Yes, I’ve been to all the realms. I know how to shield myself from Heimdall’s sight. I believe all of the Nine are monarchies.” He took the seat next to Stephen and leaned back in it. Perhaps they would leave the other portals for another day. He answered Stephen’s rapid fire questions in a bored tone, using his seidr to paint nonsense designs on the ceiling.

“Every Realm is a different plane of existence. For example, Jotunheim is a world of ice and mountains and great, vast oceans. Musphelheim has monstrous beings of fire, and they have oceans of lava, with large cities that tether together their continents and float around the world. Niflheim is also a world of ice, but it is great glaciers moving through poisoned mist and fog across long, endless plains, and they have brief growing seasons, where entire towns will crop up in a matter of days around a fresh patch of grass, so that the nomadic citizens can till the land and grow food before it freezes over again. Vanaheim is a divided world, home to the Vanir, Asgard’s sister people, and they are as powerful and as beautiful as the Aesir. But while they also have their warriors, it is not as vital to their culture as it is on Asgard. The more civilized of the Vanir are more inclined to music and theater than Asgard, and are very proud, and I always took great joy in knocking their delegates and royalty down a notch. Their more barbaric peoples take to their great waters and roam the seas and lakes, fighting the various beasts that reside there.”

He tipped his head over to meet Stephen’s gaze. The witch looked famished for more information, as if Loki was a particularly good teacher. Fascinating. 

Continuing, Loki looked back up to the ceiling. “You saw a brief glimpse of Alfheim, but it is the world of Light, elves and otherwise. I did not include animals in the portal because I believe you would have a hard time understanding them, as they do not look like any animal on Midgard. They are generally massive, and usually have small shafts of light for fur, or scales. The entire world is powered by their powerful suns.

“Svartalfheim, on the other hand, is the world of the Dark. They have the Dark Elves, and their world is loud and terrible. They have trees taller than your Midgard’s skyscrapers, and they built their homes up in the leaves. They only come down to steal and scavenge from other worlds, and their populace is…” Loki sniffed and made sure Stephen saw the unpleasant look on his face, “offensive, to say the least. They are a race of thieves.

“Midgard, of course, you know. You humans believe yourselves to be so advanced when you are actually one of the most underdeveloped races in the known galaxy. Very embarrassing, but of course, you don’t know well enough to be embarrassed. Your race is several hundred years behind most other comparable Realms, is my understanding. But it’s no matter; at the rate you are destroying your Realm, by the time you catch up, your planet will be long uninhabitable.” He patted Stephen on the hand. “Don’t worry, if you’re still alive, I’ll save you.”

He waved off Stephen’s sure blustering about the future of the Midgardians and sat up in his chair, facing the witch full on. “I am very old, compared to your people and, even in the memories of your planet, I am old. I have seen comparable things happen to other planets. Again, feel free to use the Time Stone and turn back reality for hundreds or thousands of years and try to fix your planet.”

“You know I cannot—”

Loki continued as if he hadn’t been interrupted, “You’ve seen Asgard, of course. But you did not see the beauty of a sunset over the great waters, or watch a sunset from the Bifrost. You did not go on a journey through the woods and climb to the top of the tallest tree you could find. It is a very beautiful Realm. I only wish it were still my home.”

“Your home?”

Loki smiled at the witch. “Yes, even as your planet is inevitably doomed, I seem to have found a small niche of it that has called to me. Perhaps it is the company.”

He smiled into their kiss and pulled back just enough to ask, “Would you like me to tell you of Helheim?” and the two of them laughed as Stephen tugged Loki to his bedroom.

* * *

Loki wasn’t keen on practicing any curses or spells designed to cause death or pain inside the Sanctum, but he also wasn’t allowed to leave. He enjoyed learning about them, and made sure to remember a few of the nastier ones, but he didn’t want to harm any of the artifacts or Stephen especially. Stephen had offered to take him into the mirror dimension—it apparently existed between realities—but even the thought of possibly becoming trapped there terrified Loki enough that he denied. Instead, Stephen created a few portals to obscure, uninhabited places on Midgard for him, and he put seidr-absorbing dummies in front of it, just in case he missed. 

His first few uses of Dugreptir were underpowered and barely incapacitated the seidr dummies, and it took a great deal of practice to perfect the amount of seidr required to destroy the dummy without destroying anything it was holding or wearing. It was draining at first, and he spent a few afternoons napping while Stephen researched before his seidr acclimated to the new spell.

Stephen had finally had a breakthrough with his own seidr. He could pull energy from the Dark Dimension and use it to suffocate Thanos, wrapping the energy around the Mad Titan until Loki could use Dugreptir. Stephen also was the master of the Time Stone, which meant that they had infinity chances, given that they could trap Thanos within a time loop until they managed to kill him. Coupled with Thor’s strength and lightning, Loki firmly believed that they had a chance. More of one than they ever had before.

He enjoyed it, the weeks while Thor was on Asgard, even as he missed his brother. Thor sent a few ravens with letters, but he wrote nothing more than asking how Loki was doing and giving a brief update on his progress, which of the scientists and seidrmadrs were willing to come with him, how Odin and Frigga were fairing. He sent a few notes back, telling Thor of his success with Dugreptir and how Stephen had begun practicing with energy from the Dark Dimension, and he always made sure to end his replies with _Come back to me. Loki._

Thor spent almost a month away in Asgard. He returned with three scientists and two seidrmadrs, and spent a few days with them in the New Avengers Facility to help them get acclimated and to introduce them to everyone. Stephen and Loki joined them.

As Loki and Stephen stepped through the portal into the Facility, Thor greeted them with a booming shout. He swept Loki up in his arms and held him close, the two of them breathing each other in, Loki holding Thor just as tightly.

It took them a few moments to separate, and Thor kept his arm around Loki’s waist as they weaved through the room, helping the Aesir and the humans get to know one another. One of the seidrmadr’s anchors had come with, a tall, thin man with a goatee and a sardonic look on his face. Stephen went to ask him a few questions, but the man brushed him off.

Loki spent the night tucked into his brother’s side, occasionally pulling Thor over so he could talk to Stephen, and Loki told Stephen quick stories of countless dinner parties and feasts and celebrations that had all been the same. He had spent so many years at Thor’s side, sharpening his quicksilver tongue on boring political officials, eagerly listening to whatever gossip the delegates and other advisors brought with them. Looking back, it had been so clear that he would always be at Thor’s side, the voice in the ear of the King. He had always enjoyed learning about other cultures and the other Realms, and used the information gathered at these parties to casually recommend to Odin or Thor what their next moves should be, even if his advice had rarely been taken. He had always been at the seat of power but had never realized it.

Asgard had long used seidr in its culture. It was no less a science than the hard sciences. But the practice of seidr was very different than their practices of chemistry or geology or astronomy, and often, a seidrmadr would specialize in one branch of seidr and join up with a scientist in a similar field so they could collaborate and further the sciences together. Long ago held beliefs of seidr use causing a man’s vitality to weaken or for his offspring to be poor fighters had faded into a societal custom that seidr was less important than physical strength in battle. Loki had long suffered under the society that simultaneously praised and cursed him for his powers. The people Thor brought with him were no different.

The scientists—Liv, Birger, and Olavo—were all tall and gifted in their particular field. Liv studied astrobiology, of how to keep Asgardians, and now humans, alive off-realm. She was just over 2000 years old and had spent almost all of that time helping Asgardians travel through space, either in battle or for pleasure.

Birger was a great tree of a man, nearly Thor’s size in strength and power, but he dealt with small things: plants. He grew food in space, and had worked with seidrmadrs in developing pocket dimensions where food could be stored and grown. Loki had deigned to assist him a few centuries ago, as he was one of Asgard’s masters of different types of pocket dimensions. 

Olavo was old, ancient—he had been good friends with Bor, Odin’s own father—and he designed and built ships for interspace travel. He was no longer as strong as he had once been, but he had decided to come to Midgard when Thor had promised that the Man of Iron had robots that would build Olavo’s designs for him. The three of them were good friends, and had worked together on hundreds of various projects, and had even designed a ship for Loki when he had turned 1250.

However, the two seidrmadrs and the anchor they had brought with them were all not fans of Loki. He had long ago grown more powerful and knowledgeable than any other seidrmadr in any of the Nine Realms, and had taken great pleasure in being the student that surpassed his teachers, and had taken no fault in telling any of them. The seidrmadrs were Alverus and Nidi, and the anchor was Alversus’s, named Kvistr. They called Loki ‘Tori’, for Spear of Thor. There was a long-running joke in Asgard that Thor kept Loki around only because he could turn into a spear in battle, and that Thor was so protective over him only because he didn’t want anyone to take his Spear from him. 

The Avengers and the Aesir all grouped together around their largest table, and Thor pulled Loki so close to him that he was nearly in Thor’s lap. Stephen took the seat next to Loki and they all looked to Stark and Steve as Stark began the meeting.

The first test would be bringing the Aesir to a Midgard timeframe. The scientists were no stranger to haste and completing projects in less than a year, but the seidrmadrs existed on a scale that was foreign to the Midgarians. A week or a month was a far different amount of time to the two races, something that Thor had spent part of his month on Asgard trying to relate. It was especially important when Thanos was on his way to another Infinity Stone.

Stark and Olavo had already begun comparing blueprints and diagrams, and with all his expertise, Olavo had suggested a timeline of two months to build the first prototype. The Avengers were immediately offended when Olavo had suggested they were inferior, causing Loki to roll his eyes and Thor to interject, “Our races are very different. Humans are delicate creatures. For example, we can tolerate far larger extremes of temperatures, or even lack of oxygen. We also have seidr, which makes our bodies stronger and heals us. Do not be offended; there is a reason your people called us Gods.”

They still seemed offended, but they were momentarily mollified. Stark continued talking about the ship designs he had come up with, how he had designed the Quinjet and how he believed it unsuitable for long distance space travel, with the Asgardian scientists weighing in. The conversation slowly turned to how the seidrmadrs would help, and how they would begin developing new technologies and spells secured to objects that the Midgardians could use to compensate for their lack of innate seidr. The seidrmadrs assumed that the humans would need seidr assistance to survive in space for any length of time, and they were astounded to learn that humans were regularly living in space, even if it was only 250 miles above the surface of Midgard. 

A few hours later, as Loki was convinced he was going to die of boredom, Stark had food brought in, and Loki watched in amusement as the Aesir all attempted to eat the pizza. Thor was involved in a long story about some battle he had won, and Loki turned to Stephen, using his seidr to turn his pizza into a well-aged roast. It didn’t taste as good as the real thing, of course, but it was better than pizza. 

They ate off the same plate, Stephen conjuring up a cup of tea for them to share. 

“Have you travelled through space?” Stephen asked, keeping his voice low.

“Of course,” Loki told him. “As have you. The Bifrost—”

“No,” Stephen interrupted. “I mean what they’re talking about.” He motioned with his fork towards the Aesir visitors. “In one of your spaceships.”

“Yes. My mother commissioned a small ship for my 1250th name day. I also have ventured to many other Realms and worlds in my life.”

“Why is that?”

Loki sighed. “I never belonged on Asgard. And I grow bored so easily...I always was looking for something new, something interesting. I always wanted to know the things people refused to tell me, the things they hid from everyone. So I went on…adventures. Expeditions. Always trying to get away from what awaited me at home.”

“What was waiting for you?”

Loki motioned subtlety to the seidrmadrs, and Stephen became aware of the small bits of seidr that Kvistr had been tossing at him throughout most of the meeting. “My…constituents and peers have rarely been fond of me. I am praised as a prince and a prodigy and simultaneously treated as an outsider. It is of no matter now, of course. But it was very agonizing when I was younger, even as I took pleasure in causing mayhem and pain to those that disliked me.”

Stephen took a long sip of tea and shook his head. “I had a younger sister, Donna. She drowned in a pool, and I was unable to save her. I wanted…to do what I hadn’t been able to do, for other people. I was incredibly successful, and I let it go to my head. I told you I injured my hands in a car accident, correct?”

“Yes, and then I had to learn more about your horrible realm to find out about _cars_ ,” Loki replied haughtily, but he caught Stephen’s gaze and smiled.

“I was talking to my assistant, who was giving me prospective patients. I was looking at one of their scans when I went off the road. It was my fault.”

Gently, Loki rested his hand on Stephen’s shoulder and leaned in closer, sending soothing waves of seidr to the witch. Stephen relaxed slightly, picking at the roast, not looking up at Loki.

“All I wanted was to be a surgeon again, but I had to leave that life behind when I became the Master of the New York Sanctum. Perhaps even before that. The power of the mystic arts is strong enough that I could have drawn upon it every day and gone back to my previous life. But I chose not to; I decided for a life of pain and nerve damage instead of following my dream.” He finally looked up and met Loki’s gaze. “I do not regret a second of it.”

“Oh?”

“It brought me to you.” Stephen took a deep, shuddering breath and straightened up in his seat. “We don’t have to talk about this now.”

Loki looked around the table—Steve and Thor, engaged in conversation; Tony and Olavo discussing ship designs; the Aesir seidrmadrs and Kvistr all delicately eating pizza, simultaneously looking disgusted and fascinated; the rest of the Avengers all engaged in conversation with no attention on the two of them—but he nodded. “I have lived a very long time,” he told the witch, “but I am glad that I can spend your life with you. You are a bright light in my life.”

Stephen flushed, but Stark called for everyone’s attention before he could reply. One shaking hand rested on Loki’s thigh as they all turned their attention back to Stark, and Loki kept his hand on Stephen’s shoulder even as Thor tugged him closer.

The meeting ran long into the evening, and Loki was exhausted once they were allowed to leave. He would be splitting his days between helping the Avengers and the Aesir in the Facility and continuing research with Stephen in the Sanctum. Thor was going to be dedicating nearly all of his time to helping Stark and the Aesir build a ship, and he had also been unofficially elected as the go-between for Loki and Stephen and the rest of the Avengers. Steve would be coming to the Sanctum a few times a week to be appraised of their research, and he had also admitted to wanting to learn more about Asgard and seidr, and he had wanted Loki to teach him, even with the other seidrmadrs from Asgard being willing to help. 

Loki and Stephen leaned on each other as they went through Stephen’s portal back to the Sanctum. It was habit to follow Stephen to his bedroom but Thor’s heavy hand on his neck stopped him, and he gave Stephen a brief kiss goodnight before he turned back to his brother.

Thor led him to his old bedroom, and shut the door behind them, waving Loki over so he could undress him. Loki obliged, leaning on his brother as he undid various buckles and pulled open laces and popped hooks and finally, his brother was bare in front of him, all warm skin and welcoming arms. Loki used seidr to disrobe himself, and then he joined Thor in bed, curled up on his brother’s chest.

“I missed you,” they both said, and Thor chuckled beneath him.

“I will have to be gone a few months to reach Nidavellir,” Thor told him, and Loki sighed. “Stark said he will have an ‘email’ for me, so we can communicate that way, but I do not wish to be parted from you.”

“Nor I you, brother,” Loki confessed. “I enjoyed growing closer to Stephen during your absence, but I still felt your loss.”

“I see you have figured out your relationship with the witch,” Thor noted.

“Yes...After Thanos is defeated, I believe I will return to Midgard with Stephen. He will only live for another fifty years at most, and I would like to spend that time with him. If you are amenable, of course.”

“Fifty years is nothing to our lifetimes,” Thor finally sighed, after a minute of deep thought. “I can give you to the witch for that amount of time. We will figure out how I will see you more frequently than once a month once Thanos is defeated; I won’t think of it until then.”

“Of course,” Loki acquiesced. “My priority is always defeating Thanos.”

“Behind your oath to me, I hope.”

“As always, my King. Nothing comes before you in my life.”

Thor pulled him even closer, dipping his head down to press his nose to Loki’s hair. “You always know how to please me,” he mused, and rough hands moved across the scars on Loki’s neck. “My brother, my beloved. I will never love another as I love you.”

Loki rolled completely on top of Thor and felt his soul settle. As much as he cared for Stephen, he was tied to Thor, and their souls and lives were tied together. They were the Midgard definition of soulmates. The two of them, together forever.

“I love you,” Loki whispered to his brother, his voice no louder than a breath. But Thor heard him, as he always would. “I am yours.”

Thor nodded and pulled Loki up so he could press a kiss to Loki’s forehead, and then to his cheek. His fingers continued to trace the collar he had left on Loki’s throat. His instinct was to lower himself, but Thor’s grasp kept Loki firmly on top of him. 

Comfortable for what felt like the first time in ages, Loki gently allowed himself to relax into sleep, Thor warm around him and in him and his soul. He was comforted and safe.

Nothing anyone could give him, not even Stephen, could ever come close to this.

* * *

A few days later, Loki had uncomfortably settled into the routine required of him. He spent every other day in the New Avengers Facility with the Asgardian scientists and seidrmadrs, and then the other days with Stephen, and occasionally Steve and Thor. He split his nights between Stephen’s bed and Thor’s. The entire situation was disagreeable, but Loki managed well enough. Thor was proud of him, no matter what he did.

That day, Loki had spent his day being taunted by the Asgardian seidrmadrs, and he had returned to the Sanctum to find Stephen and Wong preparing dinner. Loki took a seat at the kitchen table and flicked his fingers, summoning a large chalice of wine. He drank the whole thing in one go and then refilled it, rubbing at his temples.

He supposed it had been too long since he had been around any other Aesir, and he had forgotten their distaste for him. Especially the seidrmadrs, who Loki had spent decades mocking and besting; none of them liked him. His skin used to be thicker, but perhaps the part of him that had come back different was less resistant to cruelty. It was difficult to care about the opinions of those lesser than him, especially seidrmadrs that he had passed in ability so long ago, but that didn’t make their insults any less pleasant to deal with.

“Rough day?” Stephen asked, and Loki looked up and took the proffered plate. Wong went back out to the library, citing that he intended to continue researching, and Stephen took the seat next to Loki.

“How do you deal with criticism from those lesser than you?” Loki queried, grimacing at the salmon and roasted potatoes on his plate. He realized that he was in an unique situation; rarely anyone in his life had ever cared enough to listen to his complaints about how the other Aesir treated him, as his parents would generally tell him he was overreacting and Thor would either accuse him of lying or find the perpetrator and threaten to cave their skull in. Stephen cared about him, oddly enough.

“I feel like you believe almost everyone to be lesser than you,” Stephen told him amusedly, and Loki gave him a sharp grin.

“You would be correct, and I long ago bested any other seidrmadrs skill, on Asgard or anywhere else I have traveled. But they still insist on treating me as if I am still a child brought to them for teaching! I am a fearsome warrior in my own right and they _still_ call me Tori! As if I am nothing more than a weapon for my brother.”

“Tori?”

Loki snorted. “It means ‘Spear of Thor’. Some of Thor’s friends and fellow warriors noticed that whenever I accompanied Thor in battle, he would always win. He rarely lost on his own, but with me there, it was a guaranteed win. My dabbling in shapeshifting became known and a rumor began that I could turn into inanimate objects, such as a weapon. I quickly dissuaded them of that notion, but the rumor stuck, as did the belief that I was no more than a lucky charm, and not a feared and powerful warrior on my own. So they call me Prince Tori.”

Stephen was aghast. “Don’t you earn respect just as a member of the royal family? How could your parents let them treat you like that?”

Shrugging, Loki continued, “My other...prolictivities also contributed to the name. As the second son, I had no obligation to carry on the line, and therefore made no attempt to hide my homosexuality. Being attracted to the same sex is generally accepted in Asgard, but rarely amongst royalty. Warriors, of course, have a different code that they must abide by, but homosexuality is not forbidden.”

“Asgard is not so different than Earth,” Stephen mused, taking a sip of his drink.

“I am not familiar enough with the varying cultures on your planet to agree with that,” Loki replied, but he nodded. “I am merely frustrated, that is all.”

“I understand.” Stephen looked uncomfortable for a moment and then he sighed. “This may be rude but I am curious. Is Thor straight?”

Loki chuckled. “Mostly. He slept with most of the women in our age range, and I believe some of the men. I would consider it very difficult to live as long as we do and stick to one gender. Even just once, you get curious.” He shrugged and picked at his dinner. “Thor’s liaisons with men didn’t matter, as he kept quiet about them, and it was known he would marry a woman.”

“Was?”

“Thor has shown no interest in marriage.” Loki smiled and looked up at Stephen through his lashes. “Seems he has already found the one he wishes to spend the rest of his life with, much to our parents’ chagrin.”

“What about your lineage?”

Loki shrugged again. “I am the second born, it is not my responsibility. I am free to spend my life however I wish, with whoever I wish. Even as the stolen son, I still hold every right as anyone of the royal family. We were brought up being told that it could be either Thor or I as the next King, but I always knew it would not be me. I knew that, even as I was the one to take the etiquette and political and history lessons, the years in Odin’s court, the unending hours of diplomatic training, the conversations with the delegates, the things Thor refused to do for years. Everything was in vain and I knew it, but I continued on hope.” He took a deep, shuddering breath and slowly released it, keeping his gaze on his hands wrapped around his chalice. 

“He told us, our entire lives, that we were both destined to be Kings, but only one of us could take Asgard’s throne. I understand now that he meant that Thor was destined to be Asgard’s King and that I am most likely Laufey’s oldest child.”

“You said awhile ago you didn’t believe Odin when he said he found you,” Stephen noted.

Loki nodded. “I believe he found me in the middle of battle, hidden away, and stole me back to Asgard. I have nothing to support that theory other than knowing Odin for my entire life, but it seems entirely too coincidental to me for Laufey to have abandoned me and Odin coincidentally found me. I also do not like the reality of my birth father despising my existence so much that he would leave me to die. I will have to ask Laufey when we journey to Jotunheim to ask for favor in passing through their realm. But that is not important now. You never answered my question. How have you dealt with criticism from those you know to be lesser than you?”

Sighing, Stephen finally replied, “I was never good at it. Even as I was always overconfident in my abilities, and being as talented as I was, I could never handle criticism. It didn’t matter who it was from, or for what reason, I simply could not handle it. So I have no advice for you.”

Loki harrumphed and crossed his arms sulkily over his chest. “Why are we even in a relationship if you refuse to help me?”

Stephen just laughed at him and told him to finish his wine. He quickly cleaned up the kitchen and then pulled Loki back to the TV room, where they both used their respective seidr to change into more comfortable loungewear. The Cloak of Levitation gently draped itself over them as Loki curled back into Stephen’s chest, gently taking one of Stephen’s shaking hands in his own. 

Midgardian media was so boring that Loki could barely stand it. They insisted on filling their minds with such inanity. At least Asgard had plays and poetry readings and mock battles and warriors who would spend their days training in the practice grounds. The TV was interesting but it did not hold his attention.

“I will have to go with Thor to Jotunheim in a few months,” Loki said, thinking out loud. Stephen made an affirming sound from behind him. “Nobody is quite certain of how long it will take to build a ship that can house Asgardians and Midgardians for the journey to Nidavellir, but Stark told me that they were basing the ship on models he had already built, so it would take less time.”

“That’s good.” 

“Of course it is. Any time our scientists have to spend redoing Stark’s research is time that Thanos is getting closer to another Infinity Stone.” Loki sighed dramatically. “I suppose, for the time being, you will have to capture my attention as well as you are able.”

Stephen chuckled at him and used a trembling finger to tip Loki’s head back so that their lips could meet. Loki hummed and curled into Stephen’s chest. Even with the TV babbling Midgardian nonsense behind him, Loki was comfortable. 

The next few months were more of the same, with Loki going between the New Avengers Facility and the Sanctum, ignoring the insults shot at him by the Aesir scientists and seidrmadrs, spending as much time as Thor as he could. His nights were spent with Stephen, and on the rare occasion Thor made it back to the Sanctum, he would sprawl across his brother’s chest and listen to his heart rumble beneath his skin. 

Steve came over occasionally and joined them for dinner, helping in the kitchen or talking with Loki about the strange things on Midgard now. Steve had one of those rectangles and Loki stole it whenever he had a chance, using his seidr on it. Stephen had one as well, but his hands weren’t strong enough to use it, so Loki requisitioned it. It was better than he could have imagined. Hundreds of years of Midgard knowledge, at his fingertips.

Stephen showed him how to upload copies of books, and Loki began writing. He had over a thousand years of knowledge hidden away up in his head, and if he was useful for anything, perhaps he could make the lowly inhabitants of Midgard worth something. Stephen knew how to make his books downloadable to Midgardians, and slowly, quietly, Loki began earning his penance. 

Stark and the Asgardians finished the ship, and Thor brought Loki in for his opinions. 

Loki stood before the _Juggernaut_ , and tipped his head back to look up at it. It was quite large, clearly big enough to house Thor and his compatriots for the many months journey to Nidavellir. He took Thor’s proffered hand and let his brother lead him up the gangway, looking around and ignoring the scientists behind him explaining things. He was not interested in the type of engine or how the ship was designed for travel through wormholes or whatever other nonsense they had for him.

All he cared was that it would keep his brother alive.

The interior of the ship screamed Stark to him, all flashy gadgets and sharp lines. Thor showed him his quarters, and Loki allowed Thor to lay him down in his bed, Thor shutting the door behind them. Thor laid down next to Loki and the two of them looked at the blank ceiling, Loki’s head on Thor’s outstretched arm.

He curled against his brother’s warm side. “We leave for Jotunheim in only a few days,” Thor told him. “Are you prepared?”

“As I could ever be,” Loki replied airily, stretching and slipping across the warm covers so that he was even closer to Thor. “I assume the work on protecting and shielding it has been inadequate by your seidrmadrs.”

“They assure me they have done everything necessary, but I hope you will check their work over yourself.”

“Of course, my King,” Loki purred, leaning up to curl his head into Thor’s neck. Strong fingers cradled the back of his neck and a heavy arm slung around his waist. 

“You could come with,” Thor finally offered, and Loki shrugged.

“If you wish it, but I prefer, as much as it pains me to say, to stay on Midgard.”

Thor chuckled at him. “I would not look forward to one of your tantrums blowing up the ship and leaving us lost.” Loki rolled his eyes. “You will be safe on Midgard. I will speak to your witch and I will press upon him my sincerity in keeping you safe. I promise that nothing will happen to you while I am gone.”

“Thank you, my King. You know I appreciate it.” Loki ran his long fingers through Thor’s hair, rubbing the long strands between his fingertips. He didn’t like this glamour, but it was what he had been given. It was strange; he could barely feel the seidr changing his brother’s form. He could only find it when he was looking for it, and looking for it he was. “Do you trust him with me?”

“Of course not,” Thor replied immediately, “but you trust him.”

Somehow, Thor was right, and somehow, against all odds, Loki did trust Stephen. Somehow, beyond all understanding, beyond all of his experience, he did trust Stephen. Loki hummed. “Not as much as I trust you,” he finally said, and Thor smiled down at him. Perhaps not the right answer, but a good one. One that Thor could accept.

They curled together for a bit longer before Thor pulled Loki to his feet and dragged him out of the room. Thor showed him the rest of the ship, the other quarters, the kitchen and the mess hall, the engine room and the laundry, and they ended up in the captain’s bay. 

Loki stroked his hands along the long, sleek, quiet computers in the helm’s bay. Behind him was the captain's chair, where the seidr tying the safety of the ship was bound to. Loki flicked his fingers through it and frowned at his brother.

“Do your seidrmadrs not know you will be travelling through space? This is preposterous.”

Thor smiled at him. “Add your own spells, brother. Do what you wish to keep us safe.”

Loki took a few minutes and then quietly asked his brother to leave. Once he was alone, he waved the door shut behind Thor and then fingered through the spells protecting the ship. Some of them were feasible, and Loki left those alone. But his brother, his King, was going to be on this ship, for months, floating in the angry expanse of space. The only thing tying him to this timeline was going to be protected by these spells. He could leave nothing to chance.

It took him the better part of a couple hours, but Loki added his own spells to the ship’s protection, and when he was finished, even Thor could feel the seidr thrumming along the ship’s walls. He had even added his own blood to the spells, spilling it on the floor in front of the captain’s chair, where he would have knelt if he’d had the chance. 

Quiet and tired, Loki followed Thor back up to the meeting room in the Facility, where they all gathered around Stark for his big announcement that the _Juggernaut_ was finally finished. Thor pressed a finger to Loki’s forehead and used some of his own seidr on him, which quietly rejuvenated Loki enough that he was able to converse with the other seidrmadrs about the spells he had put upon the ship, and how he had found their own spells lacking. 

He was arguing with Alverus about his poor cast of meteor-repelling spells when Stephen’s hand slipped into his own. Loki tipped his head and brought his partner into the conversation, asking the Midgard witch about what spells he would use for disillusionment and for sliding attention away from their vessel.

Stephen was soon in a rousing discussion with Nidi about time spells, with Stephen keeping close to Loki even as the God wanted to drift away. He was leaving in a few days, after all, and Loki knew that Stephen had grown used to his presence in the Sanctum, and he would be surely missed. Of course he would be missed.

Thor came up to them a few minutes later and stole Loki away, bringing him up to stand before Stark, the Widow, Bruce, and Hawkeye, the people who would be joining Thor on the journey to Nidavellir. They would not be journeying to Jotunheim, as the journey through that Realm would cause death near immediately for any of the Midgardians. Loki did not care for any of them but knew that his own death would be imminent if even one of them died.

“I have reinforced the spells on the _Juggernaut_ , and I feel that the ship is sufficiently protected for the months of travel ahead of you,” Loki told them, and waited for their gratitude.

Strangely, the four of them looked uncomfortable, and not thankful in the slightest. Loki had exhausted himself in the effort to correct the efforts from the inferior seidrmadrs, along with even more spells, and they could not even dredge past their pride to thank him? Humans were disgusting little creatures.

“How can we trust you and your spells?” Banner finally asked him, crossing his arms over his chest. 

“My brother will be on that ship with you,” Loki told them, and Thor’s strong hand palmed the back of his neck. “I would be signing my own death warrant by allowing harm to come to him, let alone any of you.”

Stark snorted at him and the Widow shook her head. “I watched you kill dozens of people while you were on Earth,” Stark told him. “Don’t think I’ve forgotten that, Sparkles. I spent months on that ship, and I know the ship is safe. I don’t trust you, and what you did to it.”

The Widow met his gaze. “Why don’t you trust your world’s magic users?” she asked, and Thor made a questioning sound from next to Loki.

Loki glanced between the Widow and Hawkeye, who still resolutely refused to look anywhere near him. He bared his teeth. “You believe I would put my King at risk by trusting someone else? Especially people who I bested in the art of seidr hundreds of years ago? Widow, you surprise me.”

She gave him a thoughtful look but then tipped her head at Stark. “If Thor trusts him,” she started, but Stark interrupted. 

“I don’t think we can trust Thor’s judgement on Loki.” Most likely true, but he didn’t have to say it like that. Very rude. “But Nidi assured me earlier that Loki wouldn’t be able to remove any of their spells, and that he had run the spells through a failsafe of some kind.”

Ah, yes, Nidi, who was so weak he didn’t even need an anchor. Loki was _sure_ that he couldn’t tear down any of that man’s spells. But he kept quiet, holding his hands behind his back and keeping his chin up. 

He merely nodded when both the Widow and Stark gave him searching looks, as if mere Midgardians could detect his lies or mischief. Silly, weak humans. But it was no matter. They were useless to him anyway. All that mattered was Thor.

“I know my brother’s magic,” Thor told them, his tone abrupt and final. “None of the spells he put on the _Juggernaut_ were harmful or put the ship at risk. I checked after he finished.”

Loki would have expected nothing less, and he leaned closer in to Thor’s side, enjoying his brother’s warmth. Stark nodded, as did the rest of them after a beat. They exchanged somewhat civil conversation for a few minutes before Thor let him go back to Stephen, who had finished talking to the Asgardian seidrmadrs and was helping himself to the massive buffet Tony had given them. It was half a party and half a interrogation mission of Loki, it seemed.

He curled his arm around Stephen’s waist and leaned his head against the witch’s shoulder. Shaking fingers pressed into his hip and Stephen pressed a kiss to Loki’s temple, before he finished filling his plate and leading Loki to the nearest table. Loki was tired, and he leaned into Stephen as he watched the witch feed himself. He stole a few bits of food, and watched with hooded, weary eyes as Thor traversed the room, talking to as many of the Avengers as he could manage.

He turned his attention back to Stephen, who was casually enjoying his dinner. “Has Thor told you how long your journey on Jotunheim should take, and what will happen there?”

Loki shrugged and wrapped both his arms around Stephen’s waist, leaning into him and putting his chin on Stephen’s shoulder. He ignored the strange looks he received from some of the other Avengers; he was soon to leave Stephen, for perhaps many months. “Thor and I will journey to Jotunheim, and we will ask for a political favor, that we may use their land to journey to Nidavellir. It would be nearly a year from Midgard to Nidavellir if we could not use Jotunheim, after all, if not longer.”

“Why can’t you just go from Asgard?” Stephen asked, and he fed Loki a few bites of spiced meat. 

Loki shook his head. “Yggdrasil has many roots, and many branches. They all arch out in different ways, but Jotunheim is the closest to Nidavellir, while Asgard is far away. The journey from Jotunheim to Nidavellir is four or five months at most, while leaving from Asgard would double that time, at minimum. The humans cannot travel through Jotunheim, but they can stay alive there long enough to ready the _Juggernaut_ and to set sail into space. But Thor refuses to spend that much time away from me, and I feel similarly.”

Stephen nodded in understanding. “I have a hard time imagining you two spending more than a month separated, let alone a year.”

Loki chuckled and pressed a kiss to Stephen’s cheek, removing himself from the witch. He leaned forward and draped himself over the table, leaning his head on one arm as he used his other hand to delicately feed himself from Stephen’s plate. “So we will travel through Jotunheim, and we will ask for permission, not only to travel through their lands, but to set sail from them. I will return to Midgard, and to you, after Thor and his…crew set forth to Nidavellir. And then, we will wait.” He took a bite of sweet potato and then tapped his chin. “I imagine we will practice many spells and will also practice our lovemaking.”

Stephen flushed, the collar of the Cloak of Levitation raising up to cover his cheeks. Loki sat up straight and chuckled at him, leaning closer to nose against Stephen’s cheek and then press a kiss to it. “We will be very busy while Thor journeys to Nidavellir,” Loki purred, and he nipped at Stephen’s jaw before moving away.

Nearly everyone in the room was looking at them in shock, but Loki just rolled his eyes. As long as Thor was comfortable with his behavior, and he clearly was, anyone else’s opinion was no more than dust. 

Soon afterwards, Stephen grew tired and excused them, using a portal to take them back to the Sanctum. Loki followed Stephen to his room, and bade Stephen to sit on the edge of his bed as he slowly and rhythmically removed his clothes, baring his skin and his heart to the witch.

Stephen took him in hand, in those ever-trembling fingers, and then took him inside his mouth, causing Loki to contort and gasp and then come all over the witch’s long, angular face. He ran his fingers through his own spend and rubbed it into Stephen’s skin, marking the witch as his, even if no one other than him would ever know.

Long fingers strengthened and enhanced by seidr stretched him quickly, and Loki gasped into Stephen’s waiting, begging mouth as he was filled, finally complete. They moved together, Stephen’s unforgiving thrusts deep inside him, Loki twisting his hips and rolling his long fingers over his own trembling, hard cock. 

They came together, Stephen filling him up, Loki tipping his head back with a gasp, sharp teeth biting down on his long neck as Stephen fucked up into him.

“I love you,” Stephen gasped into his skin, aftershocks causing his hips to involuntarily thrust up into Loki. “I love you.”

Loki swivelled his hips down onto Stephen’s softening cock, keeping the witch in him, hiking his knees up so Stephen went even deeper. “I love you,” he returned, and he genuinely meant it this time. Stephen mouthed as his neck and sunk his teeth in deep, as if he could mark Loki enough that even Thor had to acknowledge it.

Soon, the witch laid back on the bed and slid out of Loki, dropping into a restful sleep. Loki nosed as his face and then pressed a kiss to Stephen’s slumbering cheek as he left the bed. He cleaned himself with a quick wash of seidr, and he dressed himself in Stephen’s shirt and a long robe, the Cloak of Levitation coming over to settle around his shoulders. He bared his teeth at the strange bit of cloth, but let it stay.

He went to the kitchen, where Wong was making dinner, and he made himself a mug of coffee, curling his hands over it as he took a seat at the small kitchen table.

Wong made him a plate; it smelled of spice and rice and meat. Loki spooned some up to his mouth, and he gave Wong a wan smile as the witch took the seat across from him. “It is very good, thank you,” he offered, and Wong ducked his chin.

They ate in silence for awhile, Loki spelling up two cups of strong Midgardian wine for the two of them.

For the many months he had spent in the Sanctum, he and Wong had not spent too many hours alone together. But they often ate together, with Wong cooking up spicy meals of vegetables or meat, always willing to share with Loki. They rarely spoke, but Loki considered Wong an acquaintance, or even a friend. Someone to eat in silence with.

“How long will you be gone for?” Wong finally asked, his deep voice rough around the edges. He took a long sip of his wine and looked over the edge of the mug at Loki.

“A few weeks at most. The travel will not take long, but soliciting and gaining the permission from Laufey to use his Realm as a travel point will be tedious at best. I have no worries that we will not succeed, but we have to be very diplomatic, something that Thor has a history of being poor at.” Wong chuckled under his breath and Loki smiled slightly. “I also don’t precisely know the requirements of Stark’s ship for departure. Every ship needs different atmosphere, different take-off space, etcetera. Stark did not find it pertinent that I know that information, for some baffling reason, so I cannot guess if we will have to ask Laufey to help us build a port for the ship, so that we may leave in safety. That will take longer, of course.”

Wong hummed into his food and then looked back up at Loki. “You’ve thought this through,” he said, as if surprised.

Loki raised his eyebrows at the witch. “I understand that we have not spent very much time together, but you should know by now that ‘thinking things through’ is something I happen, if I may be so bold and prideful, to excel at.”

“From what I have heard of your history here on Earth, I may have to argue with that statement,” Wong mused, and it took a beat for Loki to let out a hoarse laugh. 

“Worse things have been said about me,” he told the witch, and they finished their meals in friendly silence. Wong put their dishes in the sink and before he left the kitchen, he stopped next to Loki and put his hand on the god’s shoulder.

“Take care of yourself,” he requested, and then he was gone.

Loki sat in the dark kitchen for awhile longer, and then he returned to Stephen’s warm bed, slipping out of the Cloak of Levitation and shedding his clothes to the floor. He slid under the covers and curled up next to Stephen.

At long last, after so many years, he was content. His soul belonged to his brother, but the part of it that spread desperately away from Thor, towards someone else, anyone else, was happy. His seidr created a warm cocoon around them, and he and Stephen slept together, safe and at peace.


	9. CH9

Jotunheim was as vast as it was beautiful. The times before that Loki had been there, he had never quietly stood and taken stock of the great lands before him. Now, he was a son of Jotunheim, and this was once meant to be his home, as much as Thor was his home now. 

He followed his brother through the ice and snow.

Thor had gifted him with a massive fur cloak made of an Asgardian wolf, and it’s fur was soft and thick and kept him warm without the use of seidr. Thor only wore a thick red travelling cloak, his own innate seidr keeping him warm. Loki could have picked apart and peeled away Odin’s spells upon his Jotun form, but he preferred the comfort of his Aesir skin and the cloak Thor had given him.

It was a long journey from the Bifrost landing site to the palace, but Loki found himself enjoying it. Thor was quiet, always a few steps ahead of Loki, Mjolnir never leaving his hand. He was the same brother that had been ahead of Loki his entire life, and also someone different, someone that Loki could lay his heart down in front of and Thor would dust it off and keep it safe.

The furs and the walk kept Loki warm enough, and the silver sun grew ever higher in the sky as they approached the massive palace. It was not as tall as Asgard’s palace, but it was made of long pillars of ice, a flat roof stretching off into the distance. He wondered if everything in Jotunheim was only one floor high.

Two Jontar greeted them as they walked in sight of the entrance to the palace, still a long ways off. Their voices were rough, ice grating against stone, but they were polite enough that neither of them took offence.

“The King knows of your arrival. He welcomes you to Jotunheim, and bids you an audience in his throne room,” one of the giants told them, and Loki slipped closer to his brother, tipping his head back to look up and up at the Jotun. They were larger than he remembered.

He wondered if he would have been that size, if he had been allowed to live on his home world, if he had not been thieved away. 

Thor merely grunted at the giants and followed them down the long, straight path to the palace entrance. It was clearly marked, with jagged ice pillars on each side. Loki looked closer and realized that some of the pillars were carved into statues, either of strange animals or of some Jotun that he assumed were well known. He could not tell their faces apart, and he did not know enough of heritage lines to be able to understand their meanings.

Again, the magnitude of everything that had been taken from him hit him hard in the chest, and Loki looked up at the guards accompanying them, wondering if they knew who he truly was.

The palace was no warmer than the outside, and Loki wrapped his furs tighter around himself, keeping close to his brother. They walked through long halls, and the closer they came to the throne room, the more Jotun were lining the walls, staring down at them. Loki wondered if they knew what they were here to do, if they knew who they were, if they knew he had been born one of them.

He used his seidr to warm himself, twisting it into the lining of his furs, and his cheeks flushed with warmth as they were shown into the great throne room.

It was magnificent. 

Massive pillars of ice, many men wide, held up a carved ceiling. There were paintings in the ice, paintings of war and peace, paintings of Jontar and Aesir, paintings of Laufey and Jotun that looked like him. It was beautiful, and it was cold.

Laufey was sprawled in a giant throne on the far side of the room, and Loki stayed near his brother until a long-fingered hand beckoned him closer. He drifted to Laufey and then inclined his head, keeping his gaze focused up to the King. Thor stayed behind him, strangely silent.

“I request the attentions of the King Laufey, for the sons of Odin, Thor and Loki,” Loki said, and then he brought his chin up to meet Laufey’s cold red gaze. “Loki also requests a boon from his birth father, the King Laufey.”

Laufey did not look surprised, and he merely straightened his pose in his throne and looked down upon them. He barely spared Loki a glance, and instead kept his gaze on Thor, who clenched his fists and met him head on. “The King wishes to hear first from the eldest Odinson,” he purred out, and Loki grit his teeth, taking a step back so Thor was in front of him.

“I, Crown Prince of Asgard, Thor Odinson, request for King Laufey’s benevolence in aiding our Realm with a journey to Nidavellir.”

Laufey waved his hand and most of the guards behind them filed out of the room. “Let us dispense with custom and propriety.” Thor nodded and sighed in relief, but Loki watched as his hand only tightened around Mjolnir’s shaft.

“Have you heard of the Mad Titan?”

Laufey shook his head. “Not even rumors since the great war.” He looked down upon them from his tall throne and then stood up, towering over them, his head nearly brushing the painted ceiling. He casually slid down the steps in front of his throne, and came to a stop only feet in front of them, and then he crouched down, nearly at eye level. “However, that name does not inspire any faith.”

“He is now bent on destroying half of all life in the universe. Five years ago, my brother”—Thor waved a hand back at Loki, who stepped up to be equal to him—”came in contact with him, and it went poorly. But Loki learned of his plan, to find and use all six of the Infinity Stones.”

Even Laufey had heard of the Infinity Stones, and the King quickly pushed to his feet and herded Thor and Loki into a smaller antechamber, where Loki used his seidr to create stairs so that they could climb up onto the massive bench that Laufey waved them towards. He leaned against his brother and met Laufey’s cold red gaze. He wondered if there was a fire anywhere in this Realm.

“Why can you not leave from Asgard? You understand my reluctance to give anything to the sons of Odin.”

Both Thor and Loki nodded, even as Loki opened his mouth to say that he was truly not a son of Odin, but Thor spoke first. “We travel with Midgardians.”

Laufey wrinkled his nose and bared his teeth in disgust. “You wish to bring _humans_ to my land? To give them more land they can steal and destroy? To spread their taint upon my kingdom? I think not, Odinson.”

“This is where my boon comes in,” Loki said, speaking quietly, and Laufey’s heavy head swung over to him.

“You are bold to believe I owe you anything at all, Odinson.”

Loki was not deterred, and he split open the front of his furs, baring one long pale arm to the cold and the ice. He tugged at Odin’s magic and all three of them watched as his skin broke into the same blue of Laufey. His heritage marks were clear, even just on his arm.

Laufey did not look surprised, but he leaned closer, peering down over Loki’s arm. He made to reach out to take Loki’s hand in his own, but Thor’s snarl and surging to his feet stayed his hand. Mjolnir hefted in his hand was enough of a threat, especially here, where they all knew how much of Laufey’s kin and people it had ended.

“Stay your place, Odinson,” Laufey murmured, eyes still on Loki’s arm. Thor grunted and sat back down, but he kept himself and Mjolnir at the ready. “I did not believe the rumors,” Laufey told them, and Loki took his arm back, piecing Odin’s spells back over it until he was as pale and his scars were back were they belonged. 

“You truly are my child,” Laufey said, but nothing in his face or voice changed. 

The three of them sat in silence and then Loki took a deep breath and gasped out, “Did you leave me to die?”

Laufey merely looked at him. “You were born a runt. Your bearer, Farbauti, was sick while you were growing inside of her, and it stunted your growth. Jontar tradition is that if a runt can last a night, they are to be taken back home. I was…grieving, and I left you in our holy temple, in hopes of keeping you safe. I did not realize that Odin would attack that night, nor that he would wreck such devastation upon our world. By the time I was able to get to you, you were lost. As I see now, he had taken you.”

Strangely enough, it was exactly as Loki had hoped, and it loosened something in his chest to hear Laufey’s admission. He had not been left to die, not as Odin had believed. He had lived long enough for Odin to take him, and perhaps he could have lived through the cold and the snow and the dark for enough time that Laufey could have found him. But that time was gone to him, as it was to Laufey and the rest of them.

“I give thanks for the truth, King Laufey,” Loki told him, and he met his birth father’s gaze. There was no love there, nothing beyond the Kingly detachment he had seen for so many years in Odin. But he did not need more than that, not after knowing that Odin had been wrong.

“It does not bring us any more pleasure to bring Midgardians to your realm than it does for you to have them here,” Loki said. “But Heimdall cannot take them to Nidavellir.” Laufey slowly nodded in understanding. “And Jotunheim is the closest Realm.”

“I do not want them on my land,” Laufey told them, “But I remember Thanos. I would not want to be party to assisting that monster.” He leaned back in his chair and rubbed his long, black-tipped fingers over his sharp face. “I will give the sons of Odin this favor. I will not give you this boon, Loki. Use it for something wiser than this.”

Thor smiled tightly and leaned forward. “The ship will need a large port to take off from.”

Laufey waved his hand. “I will bring one of our seidrmadrs, they will create whatever you need. But get out of my castle.”

They both got to their feet and inclined their head in thanks to Laufey, the longtime enemy of their people, and Loki let Thor leave first, looking up at his birth father. Their gazes met, and Loki wondered if Laufey could have cared for him, if he had lived another life here.

But it didn’t matter, not in the end.

They met briefly with the Jontar seidrmadr, who patiently listened to their requests for the _Juggernaut_ port, and promised a finished loading dock and pad by the end of the week. Thor was silent, Loki giving his best approximations for what the ship would need.

They left the Jotunheim palace, Loki securing his furs over his shoulders and around his neck, petting down the wrinkles and smoothing out the edges. Thor was still quiet, his hand tight around Mjolnir. Loki cast a curious glance and then smirked, tipping his head back to look up at the sky. 

It was clear in Jotunheim, their silver sun casting low rays over the long ice fields. In the far distance, Loki could see where the cliffs fell off into the great wide seas. He wondered how different his life would have been, had his culture and home not been stolen from him by Odin and his magics. 

“You never did tell me how Laufey is still alive,” Loki mused quietly as they made their slow way from the palace. “I do remember killing him.”

Thor just sighed and shook his head. He still kept the glamour dropped, and his mismatched eyes were weary. But his grip around Mjolnir stayed strong and sure, as did his hand on Loki’s elbow. 

They walked for a good ways, in silence other than the quiet crunching of their boots on the snow. Loki found himself wondering if the hill they were cresting was one he would have played upon as a child, if Odin had not stolen him, if Laufey had not left him in that temple. 

They stopped at the top of the hill and Loki looked out upon the great horizons. 

“That went well,” he said, and suddenly, thunder cracked above him. He turned to see Thor looming over him, his face dark with fury. “Brother?” Lightning arched overhead and the air around them grew uncomfortably warm, and the snow grew wet beneath their feet. 

“I knew it! I knew all along! You have been _cavorting_ with him! With Laufey! To bring Thanos to Earth and kill me.”

“No, Thor! What madness is this?”

The ground shook beneath them and Loki reached out for his brother, who only stepped away from him, leaving Loki’s hand outstretched in the infinite expanse between them. “Why did you not question me when I said we would have to journey to Jotunheim, that you would have to speak to him?” The storm moved closer and Loki curled his own seidr around himself, huddling beneath his cloaks and furs. 

“Question you?” he shot back, “When you are threatening my life at every turn? When I have to be on my knees before you every night or you keep me prisoner with Mjolnir? When you have killed me hundreds of times before this and would not hesitate to do it again? And you dare to ask why I have not questioned you?” His voice shook and tears rolled down his face, but Loki stood firm. 

Instead, there was a great booming blast of lightning and thunder above them, and in the arc of light, Thor raised Mjolnir high above his head. He was a silhouette in the great storm. He was a God and Loki was nothing but a monster before him. There was hate in his eyes.

“Brother—”

Loki watched as Mjolnir came down upon him. 

It was pain, pain unlike any pain he had experienced before. Pain that caused him to sob and drop to his knees and cry out. It was the feeling of his skull splitting and his blood leaving and his heart breaking. It was the pain of the hundreds or thousands of him that had been here before, had felt Mjolnir dig through their skull until there was nothing left of him. He gasped behind a scream and looked up. 

Above him, Thor’s face went from fury to heartbreak. 

He closed his eyes. He was falling from the Bifrost, through the long dark Void, he was a body left behind on Svartalfheim, he was abandoned and betrayed. He was in the Sanctum, Stephen’s hand in his. He was walking through his home world, knowing that he had lost his history. He was the betrayer having been betrayed, after all these years, again and again. 

It was—

He was—

He was nothing. 

The world was nothing. 

All went black.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> again, i'm very sorry.
> 
> this story got SO MUCH MORE attention than i was anticipating, so thank you all so very very very much. i was honestly expecting 100 people to read it max. so thank you to everyone who commented and left kudos, it really means so much to me. if you're reading this after it's finished, please tell me what you think. if you started with me at the beginning, or the middle, or anywhere in between, please tell me what you think. comments are my lifeblood and i treasure every single one of them.
> 
> as of this posting, the sequel is almost done. it measures about 60k right now. i won't start posting until it's finished and i can read through it a few times. the next fic should be the second of three fics in this story arc, if it all goes the way i'm planning. the sequel is quite different from this fic, in terms of both plot and ending, but is still loki centric.
> 
> also, yes, just to ward off any comments about it: loki is 100% completely absolutely dead.
> 
> added 8/28/19: this series should probably be considered as one huge fic instead of smaller separate ones. there's going to be a lot of questions that aren't answered for a good amount of time. the big overarching plot is broken down into smaller fics so i don't have to post a 500k fic lmao. as of this writing, the entire series is finished except for the last fic, which takes the series to 13. it changes A LOT from 'it ends bad'. like A Lot A Lot. i have worked on this series for about a year, and put absolute blood, sweat, and tears into it. even if the following stories don't seem like your thing, please give it a chance. thank you so much for reading!

**Author's Note:**

> follow on twitter: @vorecore  
> follow on tumblr: @tennaker
> 
> please leave kudos and comments! it means a lot to me!


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